I feel like this has become a running theme this year, but this team just doesn’t like scoring a lot of runs for Casey Mize. He was absolutely fantastic today. Everything was working. He was commanding his pitches. He’s just pitching with more confidence than we’ve ever seen him pitch. You can see in his body language that he locked on. It’s such a shame it didn’t result in a win because Kyle Finnegan came in and spit it up on the first pitch.
Your offense isn’t good enough right now. It’s as simple as that. Once you get past Riley Greene's spot in the order, there’s not anybody on this offense that you feel good about being able to drive in runs in high-leverage situations. I know that I spent a majority of the time talking about Jake Rogers, and it’s the definition of insanity for AJ to think that Jake was going to do anything other than lay another egg during his extra innings at bat. Still, he’s indicative of a bigger issue. It’s the same problem that has persisted for way too long. Even though the strikeout numbers are down, this team’s offense is simply not deep enough. Could that change once some guys come back from injury? Possibly, but that doesn’t mean anything right now.
This felt like the game in the series where they had the win, and it felt like the game where they had the best shot of winning. Tomorrow, your backs are up against the wall. You’ve used a lot of pictures over the last few days, and guess what? Jack Flaherty is pitching, and you know that he’s probably not gonna be able to go more than a few innings because he’ll be back with his walk nonsense. Kevin Gausman, the newest member of the 2000-strikeout club, will be taking the ball for Toronto.
