Opening Strays
Thoughts on a mostly magnificent kick-off to the 2026 Blue Jays season. PLUS: Hoffman, Kirk, Barger, Gausman, Iris, podcast stuff, TV ratings, and more!
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Kazuma Okamoto was 2-for-3 with a walk, started both of the Jays’ run-scoring rallies, and picked up his first ever Major League Gatorade Bath in his Blue Jays debut on Friday night. Kevin Gausman became just the fifth Blue Jays pitcher ever—not just on Opening Day, but ever—to strike out 11 or more while allowing only hit. Vladdy looked October-level locked-in while picking up a hit and a walk. Tyler Rogers did an impeccable Tyler Rogers impression. Alejandro Kirk kept stealing strikes like ABS didn’t exist. The team’s 7-8-9 hitters picked up three straight two-out hit in a row to win the game. And, after it was all over, walk-off hero Andrés Giménez, fresh from driving in all three of the teams runs and clearly still on a high from Venezuela’s WBC victory earlier this month, dropped a king hell of a quote:
“I’m not gonna lie,” he said. “Being a world champion makes you feel different.”
Ka-pow!
Sure, Giménez’s fifth-inning RBI triple was of the fluky variety, practically half the Jays’ lineup didn’t reach base, and Jeff Hoffman gave us a flashback so heavy it would have made Rambo puke. But, on the whole, the team’s performance on Opening Day seemed a perfect encapsulation of who they are, who they were, and who they can be.
As such, the 2025 vibes were palpable. And not even just because of the gaudy pre-game pageantry, which, as far as such things go, mostly struck all the right chords.
I mean, I’m never going to love every single aspect of pretty much any ceremony like that, especially ones containing an obligatory military wank-off. I didn’t love the heavy use of fucking “Iris” or the design of the new AL East/ALCS Champions banner—would have preferred just “2025 American League Champions,” if you’ll forgive some extraordinarily minor nitpicking. But, emotionally, most of it was completely on point. And at least Pharrell and the Jonas Brothers were nowhere to be found, you know?
Anyway! The thing that excites me most from what we saw, and what we felt, and the 2025 of it all is that the team seems to have come into this season fully formed with that identity, and that swagger. I know, it’s ungodly early to make an assessment like that, and I know that it’s not exactly the same team, and that everybody in this beast of a division is back at square one, but you feel it too, right?
And the thing about that is: the 2025 Jays took nearly a quarter of a season to find themselves. They were 16-20 when they woke up in Anaheim on May 8th, then ripped along at a 100-win pace the rest of the way.
That’s the better part of five months. And it doesn’t even include the incredible playoff run, where they played with the hearts of lions all the way to November.
I know we all know that story. But if that was really them, and this is really them still, then I feel like we are truly in great hands. And we haven’t even seen Dylan Cease yet!
You can’t ask for much more than that from an Opening Day.
Stray Thoughts…
• OK, maybeeeee you could also ask Hoffman to for fuck sakes stop giving up devastating home runs! FUCK!!!!!
• Bro, he’s so good bro. His stuff is so good. Look at those grades and Stuff+ values on this chart from TJStats, bro. The chase and the whiff rates! FOUR STRIKEOUTS! His October!
Extremely annoying to still have to be defending a guy this good! And I’m sure the one most bothered by all of it is, of course, him. ODD!
• OK, moving on and… ugh. Please, Blue Jays. I understand it’s some big TikTok thing right now, but can we seriously not make Iris a thing? Seriously? Once was enough!
As for Keegan’s point about day two, he is, of course, bang on. Real heads know.
• Speaking of game two, it will be lefty Jeffrey Springs taking the ball for the A’s here today to face off against Cease. As such, we’re getting an early look at the righty-heavy version of the Jays’ lineup. Davis Schneider makes his season debut, playing left field and hitting second, Okamoto moves up to fourth in the order behind Vladdy, and Myles Straw draws into the lineup in right field, batting eighth. Opening Day starters Addison Barger—who I think we’ll see get to face more lefties once the season gets into a rhythm—and Nathan Lukes will begin this one on the bench.
• Barger slashed .385/.385/.769 against lefties in 13 PA this spring, after slashing .462/.533/.692 against them in 15 PA in the postseason, so he should!
• Back for more behind the plate will be Alejandro Kirk, of course. And while, as I said before, he was masterful at stealing strikes on Friday, I kind of suspect he won’t get away with this level of theft for much longer. The A’s didn’t challenge a single pitch with the ABS system last night, including the eight out-of-zone called strikes we see below. Granted, the circumstances didn’t always warrant a challenge—they did not have a ton of guys in scoring position all night, obviously—and I can understand a team not wanting to run out of theirs with higher leverage situations potentially to come. But damn.
• I tried to blow up this screen grab so that I could use it for the main image of this piece, and even tried to find the moment in Sportsnet’s replay and do it myself. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough visual information to make it work at the size I needed, and Sportsnet’s replay cuts off before this happens, so I simply moved on. A magnificent shot, however.
• Hell yes to this one:
• Filed under: Things you love to see…
• Interesting piece that’s been making the rounds today from the Philadelphia Inquirer, where they note that, surprisingly, it was the Phillies’ local broadcast that drew in the most viewers in MLB last season, averaging 369,000 per night according to Nielson. Now, of course, those are just American ratings, and we know that the Jays numbers are nearly three times as big.
Worth noting, however, before anybody gets in a rage about the Jays being slighted or Rogers not using this discrepancy even more to their advantage is that comparing these numbers with the Jays ones is not exactly apples-to-apples, seeing as Rogers broadcasts nationally, not just locally. And it’s even trickier to compare across the border in terms of the value of viewership, which is really the important thing here. Pharmaceutical and political ads are regulated in this country, and those are some of the biggest revenue streams for TV networks down south. Thankfully, Rogers is spending so much on payroll these days that we don’t really have worry so much about these things anymore!
• Ernie Clement’s piece for the Players’ Tribune was, of course, a must read.
• Nice to see George Bell as part of the ceremonies last night!
• Over in Blue Jays Happy Hour world, Nick and I have just unlocked the Patreon-exclusive bonus episode we recorded last week, in which we go through the newly announced additions to the menu at Rogers Centre for 2026 and discuss whether we would give them a try. You can have a listen below, or by finding Blue Jays Happy Hour on your podcast app of choice.
• That’s just a taste of some of the exclusive bonus content we’re producing over at Patreon.com/BJHH, which now also includes my instant reaction to the Jays’ victory over the A’s on Opening Day, a recent appreciation of Vladdy on the occasion of his 27th birthday, thoughts on how we might change the World Baseball Classic, and more! There's a bonus show every week, plus Patreon memberships get access to a fully ad-free feed of our shows. Check it out if you like, and keep your eyes out for some bonus stuff for my paid subscribers over here on Substack in the near future, too!
• Aaaaand, you know what? I think that’s it for this one! Nothing feels especially pressing that I haven’t commented on yet, and it’s getting close enough to game time that I just want to get this out. Sorry to those still waiting on a Sid dunk or a Spencer Miles thought. They’ll come in due time, I’m sure. NOW GET YOUR CEASE PUNS READY AND LET’S GO JAYS!!!!
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the vibes remain good, you love to see it