Enter the Dragon
On the best Blue Jays game of the season by far, Vladdy, Cease, Rogers and MLSE, Tommy Nance, Shane Bieber, and more!
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OK, so maybe the Blue Jays’ hitting coaches were on to something when they went and got that goofy toy dragon.
By now you surely know the story, and what has transpired since the little fire-breather showed up. Eight runs on 11 hits in 2 1/3 innings against Trevor McDonald on Tuesday. The Jonatan Clase game! And then a ten-spot on Wednesday: one from a Varsho single, four from an Okamoto grand slam, one on a botched double play, another on an infield single, then back-to-back ninth inning blasts from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer.
That one will forever be known as the Dylan Cease game, of course. And his incredible, 11 strikeout, near no-hitter will indeed live long in the memory, I think. Frankly, it’s probably weird that I’ve chosen not to lead off this post about Cease’s day. But in this case he’s a little bit the victim of his own greatness. I expect Dylan Cease to do great things on the mound. What I sadly wasn’t expecting was back-to-back homers from the Jays’ two most important hitters, let alone back-to-back big score lines. And I certainly wasn’t expecting to see Vlad putting his best swing on a baseball in months.
As good as it looked, that one probably felt even better. That is the Vladdy swing we need to see.
And though you can maybe downplay it by the fact that this happened in the ninth inning of a blowout, or that Giants reliever Ryan Walker had a 6.75 ERA even before this one, or that he’s now allowed 11 runs in his last 6 1/3 innings while striking out just one of 35 batters faced, or that the location of the 94.8 mph sinker was not good—all of which are true—it only takes a quick look at what Vlad’s done in plate appearances this season that have ended on 94+ mph four-seamers, sinkers, and cutters to see how this one stands out in a rather positive way. (It’s the home run.)
Now, don’t get me wrong here, that’s actually the chart of a player who has had some pretty decent success against those kinds of pitches. Of the 339 batters with at least 500 total pitches seen this year, Vlad’s .389 wOBA against them ranks 56th and his .370 batting average ranks seventh.
But, as we all know, he simply hasn’t been doing damage. And most of that rather toothless version of success happened in the early part of the season anyway. Heading into Wednesday, Vlad’s wOBA in this (admittedly kinda funky) split since the start of May had been just .304.
Of course, just about every stat for Vlad since the start of May is going to look absolutely brutal. Of 152 qualified hitters, he ranked 148th by wRC+ over that span! He had a 37 wRC+ in June! Just absolutely unfathomable numbers for a talent like him.
Vladdy now has three extra-base-hits in the month of July. He only had four last month. He’s equalled last month’s home run total now, too.
So… you know… baby steps.
But, small blip that it is, mirage though it may be, that’s why all this is the weirdly bigger story to me. And we can throw Springer’s blast into this conversation too. Because a not-insignificant part of why this team is in the position that it is, and why it gets sloppy and unwatchable at times, is downstream of George and Vladdy playing like shit.
They’ve needed to compromise a lot of defence to help the struggling offence and it has shown.
Let’s also not forget the vibe angle in all this, too.
The Jays looked loose on Wednesday. Fresh. Smiling. Like they were having fun. One can only glean so much from body language as seen through a camera lens and beamed through a glass panel in your living room, but this looked light years better than the mopey stink emanating off of the entire team back on Monday, when they played what might have been their worst game of the season.
A little lightness sure looked like it went a long way. So if our new dragon friend only brings that, and not actual magic, maybe that’s good enough.
And I say, let’s fucking hope so! Let’s hope it works! If not only for the sake of the team and the season, but because it would look so incredibly good on all the fake-hardass wannabe petty tyrants who spend their hours online demanding benchings and blow-ups and firing everybody and tearing it all down and just trying to make everyone else as miserable as they are.
I mean, if this guy hates it I think we all have a duty to think it’s kinda cool.
Cease the Day
Maybe I’m being too blasé about the whole thing, but Dylan Cease is an incredible pitcher and it’s a privilege to get to watch him do his thing, and a treat to think of just how long he’s going to be around doing it. Kudos all around! I highly doubt this is going to be the last time he has an outing like this, and with his durability and a contract that runs from ages 30 through 36, there’s a real chance by the end of his career he’s right up there with the only guy to have pitched a no-hitter for this franchise, and the team’s only Hall of Fame pitcher, in terms of all-time Blue Jays pitching lore.
But other kudos are in order here too, for helping to make Wednesday afternoon so special.
Kudos to Dan, and Joe, and Hazel and the rest of the crew for playing along and not doing the “superstitions aren’t real, it doesn’t matter if I say it” thing. I’ve probably evolved on this over the years—didn’t Mike Wilner always bristle at people asking him to not say “no hitter” when one was in progress or something?—but it’s definitely part of the fun when the broadcasters can so clearly be fans of the sport while still being completely professional. Great work.1
Kudos also to Daulton Varsho, who made what would have been The Catch—that inevitable great defensive play that keeps a no-hitter alive—on Bryce Eldridge’s 104 mph rocket that went 396 feet to deep centre in the bottom of the eighth. That’s the Varsho we need to see more of this year! (And hopefully going all-out like that helps convince a few people that, no, he’s not playing passively because he’s trying not to get hurt in a contract year.)2
Kudos to Kaz Okamoto for hitting that grand slam and allowing us all to breathe and enjoy the pitching display without worrying about the score line. And also simply for being a treasure.
Kudos to whoever designed Oracle Park—lol I almost just wrote Pac Bell Park, it’s been what, 22 years???—because that’s a damn fine backdrop for memorable baseball.
Kudos to whatever they’ve decided to call the dragon, who has got a pretty impressive track record so far! Though I can’t disagree here:
And kudos to all the anti-analytics weirdos showing their asses because of what they wrongly thought John Schneider was going to do as Cease’s pitch count went up. I suppose that means kudos to Schneider as well, but I don’t know... did people really not think that a guy who had crossed the 110-pitch mark six times in the last three years, and the 105-pitch mark 16 times over that span, and is one of the most durable pitchers of the last half-decade, wasn’t going to get a little bit of leeway while throwing a no-hitter in his last start before the All-Star break with a minimum of nine days rest upcoming?3 Might have been a different conversation if they were at the start of 17 games in 17 days, I suppose. But they weren’t!
*COUGH*
Fuck Rogers in the 24½th Century
When I noted back on Monday that Rogers had completed its purchase of Larry Tanenbaum’s shares of MLSE and were now owners of that company in full my simple comment was, “NOTHING OMINOUS ABOUT THAT!”
Little did I know they’d be making good on those fears awfully quickly.
On Tuesday news began to break that Rogers’ Sports and Media division was in the process of shuttering several radio stations. In the end, they’ve closed the doors on six in total, including Sportsnet 650 Vancouver and Sportsnet 960 Calgary.
Now, the scale of the MLSE purchase is so much larger than the cost of running these stations could possibly be that I don’t think we can really draw a straight line between them. Awful as the timing looks, they’re not closing stations, pooling the saved operating costs, and e-transferring it to Tanenbaum. But, especially as the Blue Jays look as though they’re soon to be folded into the new company—I actually tried my hand at making a TikTok video on this very subject a couple months back—I think what’s gone on here is probably just as bad.
It’s about what they value. A huge outlay for one thing, penny-pinching for the other.
Capital will always do what’s best for capital, and I guess we’re supposed to believe that’s all there is to it and nothing anyone can do about it. But most of us don’t believe that. Most of us believe that a business paying everybody a living wage, creating something people like, and making a fair profit along the way isn’t just OK but is the ideal. Not extracting every last granule of wealth in every possible way in every enterprise for the sake of shareholder value and to the detriment of everything else.
And people can choose to do it the other way. It’s far from the same, and maybe I’m foolishly leaving money on the table, but this very website you’re reading makes that kind of a choice by being free for all to read and relying on voluntary paid subscriptions rather than more strategically paywalling things in order to maximize how much money comes in. I can’t claim that will always be the case—please support if you can!—but it’s made close to enough financial sense for a long time now to at least be basically tenable for me. It’s just about what you value.
Clearly Rogers doesn’t value terrestrial radio. That may be somewhat understandable here in 2026, I suppose. But it also doesn’t value local reporting and analysis. It doesn’t value the quality of conversation around their product. It doesn’t value fans. It doesn’t value people.
There are stations that make money, create jobs and careers, serve fans—there are a couple of examples that have emerged in the wake of TSN 1260’s demise in Edmonton recently, in fact. It can be done.
But because the already wealthy shareholders would be slightly better served by a cleaner-looking balance sheet we’re told that none of that matters.
That none of this is surprising doesn’t make it any less grotesque. And, if we must put it Blue Jays terms here, it certainly doesn’t make me feel good about the Blue Jays losing their unicorn status within the Rogers empire, and their unique position in Edward Rogers’ ear, and ending up in a business-first entity, likely in partnership with private equity as minority stakeholders eventually, where profit-maximizing will potentially matter more that it’s seemed to have around here lately.4
Nance!
Tommy Nance, we hardly knew ye.
Except… well… because the right-handed reliever has been out of options since the start of last season, I suppose we actually got to know him pretty well.
Nance made 82 appearances over the last three years for the Jays, most notably pitching to a 1.99 ERA in 2025, functioning as a nifty little middle reliever who fit excellently near the bottom of the bullpen pecking order. This year he wasn’t as effective, walking more batters, allowing five home runs after giving up just two total in the previous two seasons, and watching his ERA balloon to a still-respectable 3.82 (though other metrics like xERA, FIP, xFIP, etc., weren’t as kind).
And I write all of this in the past tense why? Because Nance is somewhat suddenly now a member of the Minnesota Twins.
The timing of this one is sure to raise a couple of eyebrows—are the Jays selling?—but this very obviously has nothing to do with that (unless things get really bad the Jays aren’t going to press that button until the deadline is nearly upon us, plus they’ve only just acquired the power of the dragon!) and everything to do with the fact that Nance has been relegated to low leverage and, because he’s out of options, was a real limit to the flexibility of the roster.
Coming the other way is an actual prospect! Which I’d say is a pretty good outcome for an out-of-options low-leverage reliever, even if there is also international bonus pool money also heading to Minnesota in the deal.
Now, catcher Ryan Sprock is maybe not a great prospect, but he’s a riser, and just won the Florida State League’s player of the month award. Clearly the Jays see something they like there.
I dunno… works for me!
Quickly…
Just a couple of quick quicklies for this one!
• Nick and I recorded a podcast today, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for that one later. But not before he dropped his latest for Sportsnet, in which he looked at the unimpressive start to Shane Bieber’s season so far, and wonders just how concerned we should be about it. Bieber, of course, will have a chance to rewrite the narrative, as he starts game one against the Padres down in San Diego here on Friday. (And even if he doesn’t he’ll probably have several more chances to do so, such are the limited rotation options the Jays are working with at the moment).
• Cool note from Sportsnet, who inform us that Madison Shipman will be making the jump from the analyst’s desk into the booth tonight, making her the first woman to work the booth for a Blue Jays game in the network’s history. Kudos to her as well!
• Aaaaaand... that’s it! NOW LET’S KEEP THE DRAGON POWER GOING! KEEP THE RUNS COMING! KEEP THE MOOD LIGHT! AND KEEP VLADDY HOT!
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Not Cease-related, but I completely agree with this too. We should never take the quality of our broadcasts, and broadcasters, for granted. They added richly to the moment.
Besides, he’s going to take the Qualifying Offer and come back next season anyway.
Yes, yes, he’ll probably pitch in the All-Star game. And no, that doesn’t count. (Schneider should obviously start him, though. If only just to piss of Yankees fans.)
From Sports Business Journal back in February:
A spinoff through an IPO and the sale of minority positions, perhaps to individuals but more likely to private equity or institutional investors, both are on the table. They say the Blue Jays’ escalating value never has been sufficiently reflected in the price of Rogers’ stock.
Admittedly, I am not a businessperson—which… I guess I made that pretty clear when I was talking about paywalls—but I just think that once the Jays are made to live within an entity where there is more scrutiny on their bottom line, because it actually does start affecting stock price, it stands to reason that they will start behaving differently. Hope I’m wrong!
I think they got 3 dragon type things for the $70. One was a puppet. It reminds me of the scene in Best in Show where the dog owner had to buy an emergency Busy Bee to placate their dog.