Wednesday 6 July 2011

Jays appear to tie it in the 9th, Varitek is Jeter.

When you're a Saux fan, the truth doesn't really mattah. (Click on the pic for actual truth)

Alright, I'll be honest.  I saw the play and immediately thought "Not even close, out by 10 feet", and frankly, I'd have been fine with the result since any competent catcher would have successfully blocked the whole plate and made a tag and we'd be ok.  I mean Varitek clearly had his ankle at an awkward angle, risking a broken ankle, or a "Posey", by outright assuming (correctly, mind you) that his leg could withstand the impact of a slide.

It is interesting though, that on second glance, we see that Varitek doesn't particularly tag Edwin until well after the little helicopter thing, which propelled Edwin in to being safe in real life, but out in the fantasy land that is a MLB umpire's mind, the very same fantasy land that coincides with the MLB's policy on video replay for important things like game-changing situations in the 9th inning with 2 out where the tying run appears to score on a high tag, if you wanna tie the game against the Red Sox in the 9th, it's a force play at the plate.

Craig Calcatera of NBC Sports has his own little view on the game:
Reds Sox 3, Blue Jays 2: [...] An assist on that to Jason Varitek, who blocked the plate in a way that we all sorta decided catchers shouldn’t do back when Buster Posey got injured, but which I’m guessing most folks will call a heads up play today.  But really, if you’re looking for intellectual consistency in sports, don’t come to baseball. We’re all about nuance and duality here.

Well said.

Jose Bautista continued to be the only Jay that really matters, hitting another 2 run tater.  He opted to go really high and not particularly far with this one, hitting his highest elevation (139ft) and shortest distance (336) dinger of the year.  Naturally, it was over the tallest fence in baseball, so I assume he did it on purpose.  According to the ESPN home run tracker, this should have been a home run in 0 ball parks around the MLB.

And hey, remember that time that Corey Patterson tried to steal third last night in the middle of a 2-out rally?  I assume that one was on Farrell, since Bautista was running on the play from first as well, but still.  What a fucking disappointment that was.  (Thanks to John Lott of the National Post for this:
Farrell called [Patterson's steal attempt] “a poor decision, to try to make something happen when we’ve got really the only rally … to that point in time in the game. Your four-hole hitter [is] up. That was a poor decision.”
Patterson has done the same thing on at least two other occasions this season.
So yeah... when it happened, I said to nobody in particular "Go drown yourself, Patterson" but then took it back when I thought it was a Farrell-induced double-steal.  So go drown yourself Patterson.  I realize that it's kind of jumping the gun to say this now, since having just read the John Lott article, I'm furious with Patterson, but isn't it about time to end this fucking experiment?  The dude played well enough through his first 50 games or whatever thanks to a babip through the roof, and probably a little bit of help in the Rogers Centre Skydome.  Well congrats man, any good that you may have done/luck that you've stumbled upon in the first half of the season has been pretty much undone in the last month.

There's really no reason that Eric Thames should have been sitting on the bench last night, given how well he's been swinging the bat lately.  Not that anyone really cares, but he had an 11-game hitting streak snapped thanks to Farrell pinch-hitting him in the 8th inning.

Wow there was a lot to get worked up about there.

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