Saturday Bantering: More On Last Night’s Game

It is nice to see the good guys win (or it would have been nice to see the good guys win). I was out and tried to make Apple TV work on my phone, but I continuously got error messages and, finally, totally frustrated with it, followed along on GameDay. That wasn’t much less frustrating when Jordan Romano was injured in the ninth.

FanGraphs has the Jays at 74.4% chance of making the playoffs. My guess on their odds is slightly lower than that.

Everyone is talking about this:

I can’t see why Chapman would get this upset about a single run in the first inning. We wouldn’t win unless we scored, and that single run wouldn’t beat us unless we didn’t score. Chapman must know that one run in the first inning isn’t a big deal.

It isn’t a good look to be swearing at your manager in the dugout. If you have a complaint, do it off-camera. Discuss it quietly.

And beyond that, it is bad baseball to walk a guy in the first inning. Ohtani did the worst he could do, and we won the game. We pitched to him three more times, and he didn’t homer again. I wonder if Chapman complained those times.

Thankfully Chapman homered later in the game. But John will have to talk to him, hopefully behind closed doors, about this.

We often share the Umpire Scorecard when we get robbed by the plate umpire, so we should share when the umpire helps us out:

Putting Merrifield in the leadoff spot worked well yesterday, three hits, a homer, a steal and two runs. We had 8 hits, and 5 of them came from the top two in the order. But then two homers came from the rest of the order.

Today’s Jays lineup against the lefty Reid Detmers (2-7, 4.38). Hopefully, we’ll get a good start from Alek Manoah.

The Angels lineup isn’t posted yet. I imagine Ohtani will be getting the day off, though he played yesterday after leaving the game the day before with cramps. I figure the Angels will ride him hard the rest of the way since they don’t own him beyond this season.

Update, we now have the Angels’ lineup. Ohtani is playing. I’m sure they will ride him hard the rest of the way.