Happy Thurday.
We only get one playoff game today, the Guardians and White Sox play game four. White Sox are up two games to one. It is an 8:00 Eastern start.
The Rays beat out the Yankees in three games. Yay Rays.
The Dodgers beat out the Braves in four games. You disappointed me Braves.
The Brewers beat out the Padres in four games. Please, Brewers, beat the Dodgers.
We have a couple of days left in the Haiku voting. Get your votes in.
There isn’t much for Blue Jays news.
The Athletic has a story saying
the Yankees should fire Aaron Boone.
But the symbolism was hard to ignore. Boone has spent his entire Yankees existence coming up short in October, and here he had inadvertently planted his main attraction in an Aaron Judge-less cast 37 feet away from a potential Hollywood ending.
The complaint is that Boone had Ben Rice batting second and then he was one batter away from hitting at the end of the game, when he would have been the tying run. I’m a bigger fan of blaming the players than the manager.
Aaron Judge said:
“He puts us in the right position to succeed,” Judge maintained, “especially in a season like this where I am banged up missing 100 games.” Judge mentioned all the other injuries Boone had to work around and said, “He’s definitely had our back and is the guy.”
Judge turns 35 near the start of next season (if there is a start to next season). He spent most of this season injured. And he doesn’t have a World Series ring. I’m ok with him never getting one.
Shi Davidi wrote about Kazuma Okamoto and how big a star he is in Japan. I can attest to that. I wore a Blue Jays cap in Japan and people wanted to talk about him all the time (expect for when they wanted to talk about how we lost the World Series to the Dodgers.
The story suggests that Okamoto will make it easier for the Jays to sign other Japanese players. I’m not sure that is true, but ok. I’d imagine Japanese players will sign with the team that offers them the best deal, like anyone else.
The Jays do have some questions to answer before next season:
- Is Ernie Clement an MLB second baseman, or do they need to find someone else?
- Do they count on Anthony Santander to play outfield next year?
- Is Spencer Miles a starter or reliever?
- Is Ricky Tiedeman a starter or reliever? Likely reliever I’d guess.
- Do they want to sign a full time DH, or do they want to use the spot to rest players?
- And, of course, can Vlad be Vlad again?
- Do they take Myles Straw’s option? That’s an easy one, no. Do they try to sign him again?
- The Jays, and all the other teams, will be wondering what the salary cap (or tax, or whatever they call it) will look like next year?
