October 25, 2025

252 thoughts on “ALDS Game 1: Yankees (0-0) @ Blue Jays (0-0) Saturday, October 4, 2025, 4:08 PM EDT”

    1. Oof, Jackson Chourio’s hamstring. Tough to have that happen when you’re already up 8-1 in the second inning.

      That’s why I don’t fault Stanton for not running hard.

    1. Really? I haven’t had that impression over the season.
      In fact, I remember a couple of games where he had most of the offense when everyone else was being shut down.

  24. Jazz started to steal more regularly in the final part of the year. Previously he stole shockingly rarely given his speed. No idea why, and why no one talked about it.

    1. LAD’s bullpen is brutal. They might be able to hit their way past it but I couldn’t pass up Philly as a +120 dog in that series.

  31. Oh, stop. There IS a reason Toronto won the season series – they didn’t play the Yankees when they were unstoppable, but mainly when they decided to be the worst team in baseball for 2 full months.

    2. I don’t get it, it’s a bad matchup BECAUSE Gausman is so hard on them. Why would this one be the one they would “use to get the offense going”? The reason why they were unlikely to win this one is because Gausman is HARD to hit against.

    1. My bet is that they plan on Blackburn eating the innings. I think they just don’t feel comfortable with Gil. I think it’s dumb, but it’s not like they’re going to be burning their main guys today.

    2. they had the best offense in baseball by a clear margin. but let’s use the last 3 games to judge them.

    2. I think it’s dumb, as well, but I suppose it just speaks to how little they think of Gil at the moment. They just knew that Warren would be worse. I suspect Warren will get the ball in a theoretical ALCS Game 4 if they somehow win this series.

    2. My guess was to just retire Barger, then give Blackburn a clean inning in the fourth, and have Blackburn go as long as he could.

      But yes, agreed, it was dumb.

    1. They thought LITTLE of Gil, but not NOTHING. In other words, had he pitched better, he’d still be in there. He gave up two home runs, so they pulled him. They were willing to give him a chance, and he just flunked the opportunity.

      I think it is dumb of them, as well.

    2. Almost every good to very good pitcher has done this all season. Remember Miami? Or Seattle? Or Texas? Or Crochet? They underachieve expectations against top pitchers and beat up on palookas. The good Yankee teams went 14-14 against Pedro.

    1. Oh, come on, you can’t be that down on EVERYONE as soon as they have a bad stretch.

  69. Rice is an actively GOOD hitter. He’s been flailing for a little while now. It’s not all Gausman. Rice is struggling. We’ve seen Judge take over a month off. It happens. It doesn’t mean he’s been exposed and this is the end and it was all a illusion. Sheesh.

  71. Also, this doesn’t even look like Blackburn eating innings, it looks like gratuitously destroying your bullpen in the first game of this series.

    1. Right, they need to stumble into one or scrape a couple of runs and hope they can hold them until Gausman gets tired around the 17th inning or so.

    2. That’s what the good Yankee teams could do, stay close scrape out a few runs. I remember one game where Paul hit an oppo double against Pedro.

    1. It wasn’t QUITE as pathetic as it looked (it was pathetic, though), as Gausman had set him up well in the at-bat by busting him inside repeatedly before then going outside for the K.

      So it was more great pitching than a terrible Judge swing.

      But yes, it’s TERRIBLE for his rep.

    2. Is Schneider trying to out-Boone Boone?
      He must know that’s beyond his abilities.
      But let him try, I say, let him try!

  102. Again, the Judge at-bat really wasn’t that pathetic. Gausman just did a great job setting Judge up for that last pitch. It was a great piece of pitching. The Rice at-bat was much worse.

    Similarly, Stanton just got overpowered by Varland, which is a terrible look for him.

    1. I don’t agree. The superstar is not supposed to do that. Gausman had already walked two.

    1. I don’t think Judge ruined the inning any more than Rice did. And after all that, they had Giancarlo Stanton up with the bases loaded, ya know? Dude was just overpowered by Varland, who he had hit a home run against in his career.

    2. Some of the at-bat was great, that’s what made the last pitch so depressing. The last pitch was awful.

  104. Judge’s AB was inexcusable. Considering how Rice looked against Gausman, and Gausman’s reverse split, I would seriously have considered using PGold to hit.

  105. I think you’re seeing the work they’ve been doing with Doval paying off. I think he’ll come back next year even better. Just pounding it into the guy’s head to not fuck around. Your pitches are so good, just go after guys.

  106. I agree with the majority for once. If Judge had taken that pitch, it’s a run and more pressure. He’d taken tough pitches that same at-bat.
    The pressure was on the pitcher – bases loaded, no outs.
    Take the walk.

  114. I just can’t wrap my head around pinch-running Caballero for McMahon, and then NOT RUNNING!

    Only running once there were two outs, and not even on the first pitch to the NEXT batter. Obviously, Volpe K’ed and Wells grounded out, so it wouldn’t have mattered, but it’s still just mind-boggling in its stupidity.

    1. Can you imagine being the dude who’s, like, “Okay, one-run game, gotta use Luke Weaver here”?

      YOU HAD CRUZ READY! What is going on here? How can Boone be THIS stupid?

    2. Boone may be a reverse Flowers for Algernon case. He’s getting dumber as time goes on.

    1. Don’t worry about that. Somebody should’ve thrown a shoe at Boone when he called for Weaver. I miss Mark Leiter. I even miss Ian Hamilton. And I almost miss Jake Bird.

  144. Make Cruz throw strikes and he’s in trouble. But at least it’s not throwing in the towel like using Weaver. And who knows with a clean slate Cruz might’ve had room to maneuver.

  149. Boone saw good things from Blackburn despite having an over 5 era each of the last 4 years.and never having an era+ 100 since his rookie season 2018.

  151. I can believe that they had a bad game – an epochally bad game even. Happens.
    But that Boone managed to completely avoidably gut his bullpen – THAT is truly incredible. What a dick.

  152. And the bullpen – they were down 2-0 before the inexplicable bullpen abuse even began.
    If you’re going to blame anybody for this loss, it’s the offense.

  153. I’d blame Judge except Boone would’ve used Weaver anyway. Gil didn’t pitch that bad and our bullpen is not deep. When you pull Gil you need to go to to Warren or Weaver becomes inevitable.

  155. Boone on Weaver “Not a stuff issue. Couple of changeups that were flat. It can click like that because the stuff is there, we just got to get him locked in on his delivery.”

  156. Kay on Boone’s late pinch running decision, “he wasted 3 pitches where Cabby could’ve stolen?” Boone didn’t see it and probably somebody had to tell him to pinch run.

  157. Nothing compares with pulling Gil THAT EARLY. It’s nuts. You can’t demand perfection – and if you don’t get it, you burn your entire bullpen. In what world is that a better solution?
    If you won’t let him pitch at any level worse than perfect, then you can’t have him start, because you don’t have an infinite bullpen to back that unreasonable strategy up.

  163. Both Yesavage and Bieber have sub 4 eras, and under 4 era pitchers have be a problem for us. Ródon is you know Rodon who can fall apart in a hurry and will probably at best go 5 or 6 which means we’ll need some shaky relievers to come through.

  164. “ The results haven’t been good. There’s been a lot of internal factors. I don’t want to get too crazy into it, but there’s been adjustments that I’ve had to make based on things people are seeing. It just hasn’t lined up,” Weaver explained after the game.

    “It’s pretty late in the adjustment period. It’s just not lining up out there. I don’t feel like myself. I don’t feel like my mind is completely clear to go out there and attack. I do feel physically strong, I do feel mentally strong overall. There are just some factors that are building up and I’m just not executing at the clip I want to.”

    MLB.com: Could adjustments to combat tipping be the source of Weaver’s struggles?

  171. “I don’t really feel like myself,” Weaver said after the 10-1, Game 1 ALDS loss to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. “I don’t feel like my mind is completely clear to go out there and attack. I do feel physically strong. I do feel mentally strong overall.

    “I just think there’s some factors that are building up.”

    Well by all means let’s keep running him out there.

    1. Absolutely. An admitted and unsolved problem expressing itself as a previously stellar pitcher’s inability to get even a single opposing batter out is, apparently, no problem at all.

  172. Also annoying are the headlines – Ohtani pitched poorly enough and was in line for the loss when the actual hero, Teoscar, saved his bacon.
    To complete his two-way line, Ohtani struck out at least his first four times to the plate (I went to bed after that).
    And yet the number one headline MLB.com is “Ohtani’s playoff pitching debut was worth the wait,” talking about history being made.
    Ohtani did everything possible to single-handedly lose that game for the Dodgers, but MLB.com just can’t accept that.

    1. And I know that there’s supposedly no such thing as clutch, but… it’s hard to look at the REPEATED heroics of players like Teoscar, Leyritz and Gibson and really believe that.

    3. Clutch is overrated but not non existent. I think anti clutch is more prevalent. Nick Swisher career 249/799, post season 165/575 over 185 PAs.

    4. MLB is so all-in over-the-top for Ohtani. One wonders if he [Ohtani] failed a drug test, if they’d bury it. Yeah, they would. I wonder if anyone can find the distance of every MLB HR Ohtani has hit.

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