Saturday, September 5, 2015

Tomorrow: another opportunity to be, in the swirl that is a universe of chaos

Orioles at Jays - September 4, 2015

Jays loose 10 - 2; Yankees win - Jays are .5 a game up in the Al East


I can think of dozen reasons this game played out the way it did:
  • the Umpire's wild strike zone;
  • plays not made by the defense;
  • Stroman arriving on the bench on a Hutchison Start day;
  • Jays line-up (uncharacteristically) swinging at balls outside the strike zone;
  • Jimenez's (Tactic?) of delaying throwing the ball in the early innings;
  • a bad read by Goins of a hit ball to right - where he didn't advance to 3B with no outs;
  • Goins triple clutch on a DP ball that went from a sure 2 outs, to perhaps one out, to no outs;
  • Bo Shultz first time out in a hold-the-deficit-where-it-is situation (blows the game wide open giving up 4);
  • On any given day Baltimore is better than the standings reflect.

Goins appears a lot in that list, but don't get me wrong, a cusp player who plays great with a winning team - that's winning - often looks much better than he actually is, especially on a team that's experiencing the inevitable losses that even great teams must suffer; the great team itself often better than the Team - against any team than is actually is.

These are the wages of excellence.

Key moments in a game often get magnified later. One was the odd play in LF in the 6th, when the Baltimore's re-took the lead just after the Jays had tied the game - when on a jump at the wall for an out, became a HR when the ball ricocheted out of Revere's glove in an unlikely, seemingly impossible single-bullet-theory bit of physics, finding itself on the other side of the wall.

MLB Advanced Media Embed


Also:
Baltimore Orioles  IP   H  R ER BB SO HR  PC-ST  ERA
Jiménez(W, 10-9)   5.2  4  2 1  6  4  0   95-54  4.24

A test of faith in a game that offers a lot of that; tomorrow another opportunity to be.



mh

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