It is perversely emblematic of the 2021 Toronto Blue Jays that Vladimir Guerrero Jr did something incredible last night that is memorable for what it wasn’t as much for what it was.
Guerrero blasted a Corey Kluber kluball1 113 mph to dead centre field, only to have the ball strike the very top of the wall with such force and at such an odd angle that, thanks to the backspin that helped generated his 46 home runs to date, it bounced straight up but stayed in the park. It was a run-scoring and crowd galvanizing double rather than the 47th home run of Vlad Jr’s season.
Would that extra/early run have made a difference in a game the Blue Jays went on to lose by four? I guess we’ll never know, just like we’ll never know what happens if Marcus Semien’s throw against Detroit is true or what would’ve happened if Rafael Dolis ended up on a rocket to the sun three weeks earlier.
More to the point: it doesn’t matter. The Blue Jays are 88-71 because they have lost 71 games so far this season. They might not lose another one and it might not matter.
During the most recent episode of Spin Rate, guest Mike Axisa said something that struck me: after 159 games, teams pretty much are what they are. While the Blue Jays have a better run differential and better players, they’ve won fewer games than the Seattle Mariners because they always manage to find a way to lose. Sometimes the manner in which they lose finds them, sometimes they find the way all on their own.
Just like Vlad Jr, the talisman of the offense, the beating heart at the centre of the game’s premier order, is not at specific fault when it comes to the Blue Jays lot in life. His underwhelming numbers in “late and close2” situations are not something we would expect to continue nor are they indicative of a lack of trying or even a moral failing. They just are.
Sometimes that’s the only explanation: things are this way because they are. Did Vlad Jr plan to accumulate a grand total of three hits in the team’s most important seven games of the year? I don’t think that he did! And yet, here we are.
Now the Blue Jays “control their destiny” about as much as any of us do. There are some very specific things they can do to put themselves into the position they seek, but mostly they’re just bobbing along in baseball’s rubber duck race, hoping they don’t get brushed too firmly by a particularly long stick or stiff breeze.
They can sweep the Orioles and still miss the playoffs completely. Vlad Jr could hit six home runs this weekend but if Steven Matz has a bad day, it might not matter. This is the predicament and the Nature of the Beast. It’s a turn-based team game with more variables than I care to list. As such, shit happens.
Now is the time to sit back and let chaos wash over you, in the delightful way that only baseball permits. Perhaps Vlad Jr’s stinger missile off Kluber will unlock something over the season’s final weekend, putting the team on his back and the Blue Jays into a position to achieve something noteworthy — in what has been an already noteworthy year.
We can savour the performances and appreciate the significance of what could be the Blue Jays’ seventh ever 90-win team in the winter. For now, I just want to see the schedule extend by a few days. Call me selfish.
It was really a changeup I just like saying “kluball”
Even this is an unkind framing to prove a point