Simmons Says – the usual collection of thoughts, dotsand shots

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Trey Yesavage has made three major-league starts.

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His fourth will come on Sunday afternoon on the largest of stages — an American League Division Series playoff start — against the New York Yankees.

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Combined, Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt have started 692 big league games, thrown for some 4,231 innings.
The first inning in Game 2 will be Yesavage’s 15th in a big-league career that’s about a minute long.

The Jays have made the correct call, going to the kid, Yesavage, ahead of either of the Scherzer or Bassitt in their starting rotation, just not necessarily the comfortable call.

The conversation manager John Schneider had to have with Bassitt and Scherzer, telling them they have been dropped from the playoff series roster, had to have been a little prickly.

Nearing the end of his career, or maybe already at the end, Scherzer came to Toronto to win and he came to the Blue Jays because, in essence, his close friend, Bassitt, talked him into it. But Bassitt was injured late in the season the Jays didn’t want to trust him with a Game 4 start while Scherzer pitched poorly enough in the final weeks of the season to end whatever candidacy he might have had for the playoffs.

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Don’t misunderstand, these are important Blue Jays in the clubhouse and have been important on the mound. Scherzer and Bassitt, the oldest pitchers on the Jays, the most intense, at times have been the voices most relied upon.
Now they’re dressed up in Jays uniforms and will act as cheerleaders throughout the series, with Scherzer gripping a baseball tightly as Kevin Gausman pitched Game 1.

Yesavage may well be ready to be great when it matters — he is that confident, composed and seemingly mature at 22 — but now he is starting Game 2, ahead of Scherzer and Bassitt, ahead of the injured Jose Berrios, ahead of the former Cy Young Award winner, Shane Bieber and the crafty left-hander, Eric Lauer.

An incredible place, really, in a personal season that defies understanding.

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THIS AND THAT

It’s never easy to drop a veteran of any kind from a playoff roster. The Jays did it with Mark Buehrle in 2015 and it caused some hard feelings. He never did pitch again in the major leagues … Yes, it’s a gamble starting Yesavage in Game 2, but the Jays figure it’s better than having him start Game 3 in the circus like atmosphere of Yankee Stadium. And after watching young Cam Schlittler dominate the Red Sox in the wild-card clincher, the Jays probably thought: ‘Why not our guy?’ …. Has to be just a little weird for Jays bench coach Don Mattingly, who played all 14 seasons of his more-than-fine big-league career wearing pinstripes, lining up against the Yankees in the playoffs … Strange that the Jays have been playing since 1977 and have never met the Yankees in the post-season …After Aaron Judge’s 53 home runs, the next seven batters in the Yankees lineup Saturday hit 26, 24, 31, 20, 19 and 21 homers on the season. The leadoff batter, Trent Grisham hit 34. After Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the batting order, the Jays have hit 21,15, 20, six, seven and nine home runs. Their leadoff man, George Springer, hit 32 … Wouldn’t this be a good time for Anthony Santander to start doing something, anything? … Sometimes I wish Ross Atkins would stop doing interviews. He never says the right words. He was bragging the other day about how many wins the Jays have had in the past five seasons. What he failed to say: Zero playoff wins in that span … If it wasn’t for the unofficial team physicians, Dr. Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Dr. Vladdy, we wouldn’t know very much about the difficult status of Bo Bichette, which keeps him out of the ALDS … Bichette, by the way, finished second in all baseball with 181 hits. He finished three behind Bobby Witt Jr., who played 18 more games … The Jays are playing the Yankees with Bichette watching and it’s possible he has played his last game as a Blue Jay. Don’t be the least bit surprised if he’s playing next season for the Yankees.

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HEAR AND THERE

Understand this: Kirill Kaprizov’s record-breaking contract with the Minnesota Wild has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with whatever Connor McDavid will sign for with the Edmonton Oilers. And he will sign, it’s just a matter of when. If McDavid wants more than Kaprizov’s $17 million he’ll get more. If he wants less, to be a great team guy, he’ll get less. His choice. McDavid will get what he wants dollars-wise and term-wise. Still not sure why all of this is taking so long to complete … Not many people knew this, but before Edmonton won the draft lottery for McDavid, the place his family wanted him to play was Buffalo. It wasn’t the pressure of Toronto but it was close enough to get there easily. He wound up in Edmonton instead. The Sabres haven’t made the playoffs once in McDavid’s 10 NHL seasons … For years, the Maple Leafs have been among the worst contract negotiators in hockey. That’s clearly changing now under GM Brad Treliving. Treliving has signed John Tavares, goalie Anthony Stolarz, his first-pairing defencemen Chris Tanev and Jake McCabe all for less than $5 million a year. And he got Matthew Knies for under $8 million a year, which is almost bargain money in today’s NHL … The one bad deal Treliving signed was giving too much to fourth-line centre David Kampf … Tip of the cap to Max Pacioretty for a fine NHL career, right to the end with the Leafs. He probably was healthy enough to play another season, but decided that family time was more important at this stage of his life. Pacioretty scored 30 or more goals five times in his career … The Mount Rushmore of No. 4s in sports: Bobby Orr, Lou Gehrig, Brett Favre and Charles Barkley.

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SCENE AND HEARD

If the Maple Leafs truly wanted to honour Joe Bowen, they would have him join the team on the road for his entire final season as their broadcaster. The cost would be less than 1-10th of a bottom of the roster salaried player who doesn’t dress. Being on the road would mean more to Bowen than any ceremony or highlight film. He’s a pro. He wants to call games from the arenas in which they are played, not off monitors. Is that too much to ask? … Kyle Lowry, who normally treated the media with a sense of suspicion and disdain when he played for the Raptors, is the latest in a long line of media-haters to become one of us. He’ll one doing some analyst work for Prime Video while playing his last NBA season … Why do Toronto sports radio stations put so many people on the air who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about? One 45-minute drive to the Rogers Centre on Saturday and I kept hearing inaccuracy after inaccuracy …Yankees manager Aaron Boone is a good friend of Blue Jays broadcaster Dan Shulman. The two spent five years working together on ESPN baseball games … Baseball has to look into the size of sliding gloves. Players are sliding into second base safe, but the gloves are touching the base, not the players’ hands. Some of the sliding gloves look like oven mitts …. Everything gets more expensive at playoffs. Tickets. Parking. Hell, media meals were up 50% on Saturday. Same meal as last week. Just a different price … Broadcaster Dan Plesac played five years for the Blue Jays for four different managers. Among them: Cito Gaston, Buck Martinez, Jim Fregosi and Carlos Tosca. Plesac calls Gaston one of the finest men, if not the finest, he’s known in baseball … The Raptors aren’t young. That’s what’s strange about this rebuilding team, if they are in fact rebuilding. This is Scottie Barnes’ fifth NBA season. If he’s going to be great, shouldn’t it be happening about now? RJ Barrett has already played seven seasons. Brandon Ingram has played nine. Immanuel Quickley is in Year 6. And Jakob Poeltl has already spent a decade in the NBA. The best hope for the Raptors this season: Emulating what the Indiana Pacers did a year ago. Played great defence and got production from up and down a deep roster. Raps have depth: But do they greatness? … Deciding when to pitch to Judge and when to walk him reminds me a little of the 1985 Blue Jays playoff series with the Kansas City Royals. The Jays pitched to George Brett more than they should have and it probably cost them the shot at the World Series … There’s a protocol with playoff baseball. Every day, each team sends one player to the interview room, team choice. In two days so far, the Jays have sent Guerrero and Springer, its two most important offensive players. Did the Yankees send Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Cody Bellinger or Jazz Chisholm? Nope, they sent Ryan McMahon and Trent Grisham. Not exactly red carpet material.

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AND ANOTHER THING

The former smartest man in Canada and self-appointed CFL saviour Peter Dyakowski thinks The Guess Who or Bachman-Turner Overdrive should play halftime at this year’s Grey Cup in Winnipeg. Which is cute and typical of dinosaur CFL thinkers who can never look forward, only back. I saw both The Guess Who and BTO in concert. One was in 1974. The other in 1976. I’ve also seen both of them play halftime shows at the Grey Cup, Burton Cummings more than once. The Jonas Brothers, by the way, played last year’s game in Vancouver. Dyakowski probably thinks that Don is one of the Jonas brothers. For those too young to get the reference, former Argos quarterback Don Jonas won the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player award in 1971 … Toronto, get ready for the WNBA. The players are fabulous. The game is kind of out of control. The commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, however, is something of a laughing stock … We worry about our adult kids. How will they make a living? What kind of living will they make? Will they do well? You don’t worry much if you’re Jimmy and Ellen Weinberg Hughes. They have three kids playing in the NHL who will take home more than $25 million this season before taxes. Think they can manage on that … Kyle Shanahan was coaching without his starting quarterback, without his starting receivers or tight end, while missing half his defensive line. And still he found a way for his San Francisco 49ers to beat the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday night in overtime. That’s what you call great coaching … The opposite, Zac Taylor, in Cincinnati. Ryan Dinwiddie’s one-time quarterback buddy with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers might be the worst head coach in the NFL … Clock management in the NFL confounds me. All game long, quarterbacks run down precious seconds off the clock before calling plays. Then in the final two minutes, they evidently run out of time or are rushed to get plays in. Why not snap the ball a few counts earlier throughout the game and not waste as much time in the first three quarters before panicking in the fourth? … Shouldn’t the Argos have changed the time of their game Saturday to 1 o’clock? Playing opposite the Blue Jays playoff game is just dumb … Did you know that Toronto was once a farm team for the Boston Red Sox. Before Major League Baseball arrived in 1977, there were the Maple Leafs of triple-A fame. Among those who managed here: Sparky Anderson and Dick Williams … Anyone who saw Stanton play high-school sports at Notre Dame High in the suburbs of Los Angeles will tell you they saw one of the great three-sport athletes of his time. The Yankees slugger could have played college or professional football or basketball had he not settled on baseball … This isn’t good for the credibility of umpiring: One batter in to the ALDS and one umpiring mistake … Happy birthday to Mario Lemieux (60), Patrick Roy (60), Travis Kelce (36), Nazem Kadri (35), Bronny James (21), Derrick Rose (37), Kerry Joseph (52), Jesse Palmer (47), Danny Briere (48), Pokey Reddick (60) and Rebecca Lobo (52) … And hey, whatever became of David Wells?

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