More than 240 comments on the Pittsburgh thread? We need an off-day time-waster. Let's blame this one on BlueJayWay.
Why? Well he (I'm assuming!) watched the Jays drop a mid-week day game to the last place Pirates (at least they didn't get swept, like the Tigers), and commented:
It does feel like the Jays have had a number of these type of games this year. Day game on the road, last game of a series, getaway day...and they just kind of look lethargic.
And I wondered - is that true? How would we know? We need someone with plenty of free time, someone willing to crawl through the daily schedule and find out. And as it's all pretty meaningless unless we know how the other teams have performed, we really need someone with no life whatsoever.
That sounds like my music!
What we're counting here are mid-week Day games to close a series - sometimes there's an off-day afterwards, sometimes not. Sometimes it's a home game, sometimes not. But they play in the afternoon, and there's always an airplane ride before they play again.
Drum roll, please:
Mid-Week Afternoon Getaway Games
W L PCT
New York 6 0 1.000
Kansas City 7 1 .875
Toronto 7 3 .700
Detroit 7 4 .636
Tampa Bay 5 3 .625
Boston 6 4 .600
Baltimore 5 4 .556
Seattle 7 8 .467
Cleveland 4 5 .444
Los Angeles 4 5 .444
Minnesota 6 8 .429
Texas 3 4 .429
Athletics 3 5 .375
Houston 3 8 .273
Chicago 3 9 .250
Clearly not a problem for your 2025 Blue Jays.
But here's a thing. Most Sunday games are day games, and a very large number of them also serve as Getaway Days. And that's a very different story:
Sunday Afternoon Getaway Games
W L PCT
New York 10 4 .714
Boston 9 4 .692
Seattle 9 4 .692
Houston 11 5 .688
Detroit 7 4 .636
Texas 10 7 .588
Kansas City 9 9 .500
Baltimore 8 10 .444
Minnesota 6 8 .429
Athletics 8 12 .400
Cleveland 6 9 .400
Los Angeles 5 9 .357
Chicago 5 11 .313
Toronto 5 12 .294
Tampa Bay 5 13 .278
You know, if this had happened to, say, the 1985 team I'd suggest an obvious explanation. They play badly on Sunday because they'd all rather be in church, and are feeling bad about being absent. But this year? I got nothing. I think all this is wonderfully meaningless and random. The most interesting thing I noticed was Seattle winning each of their first six mid-week Getaway games, the most impressive such streak in the whole league.
They've lost their last seven.
