And the Grady Little Award for world-historic pitching blunders goes to…

It’s never one thing. The Mariners’ ace didn’t have to walk the leadoff hitter in the 7th. Mariners management could have had major-league caliber hitters in the #8 and #9 spots as opposed to guys providing an endless parade of noncompetitive at bats. And while it’s hard to be hard on Julio given the outstanding game he had otherwise striking out while not seeing a single pitch anywhere near the strike zone with a 60-homer guy on deck is a hard way for the series to end.

But I will never stop being furious at the process that led to the 3-run homer that won the game for Toronto. And this isn’t a second guess — I was texting with a friend about this before the game. And it starts in Game 6, in which Dan Wilson 1)essentially conceded the game by allowing a starter with nothing to give up 5 runs but 2)let Eduard Bazardo, one of his top relievers, throw two low-leverage innings. It was just a bizarre, neither-here-nor-there way to manage an elimination game:

The only thing I could think of to defend this is that maybe Wilson was planning to use starters in a late close game 7. But nope, with the tying runs on base and the top of the order coming up in the 7th, he went not to his outstanding, well-rested closer or even one of his starters like Schneider did, but a good but secondary relief option the Jays had already seen the previous game. The result was George Springer hitting a ball that just landed in Yellowknife, and while the game wasn’t technically over it was over.

Congrats to the Blue Jays, a deeper and more fundamentally sound team I will be rooting for in the World Series. And, who knows, maybe the Mariners lose with better process anyway. But I will never stop being mad about this.

…Ryan Divish’s story is careful and measured, and all the more devastating is a result:

“I went in and tried to get my out, throwing my sinker,” Bazardo said. “Yesterday. I threw the same pitch right there and it was a groundball. And today, he got me.”

[…]

With many people wondering quite fairly: why wasn’t closer Andrés Muñoz pitching in what was the highest leverage moment of the season?

Manager Dan Wilson, who has received a healthy amount of criticism from fans about his in-game strategy and decision-making process during the regular season and particularly in the playoffs, was asked a series of questions postgame to try and ascertain why he didn’t use his best leverage reliever in the most difficult situation. Like many of his answers throughout the season, there wasn’t much detail or information in his justification, mostly vague baseball talk.

[…]

Woo had struck out Springer in his previous at-bat, but Wilson wanted a different look, even though Bazardo had faced him essentially 24 hours earlier.

“Bazardo has been the guy that’s gotten us through those situations, those tight ones, especially in the pivot role, and that’s where we were going at that point,” Wilson said.

No reliever has thrown more in the postseason than Bazardo. It was his ninth appearance of the postseason, including two innings pitched in Game 6.

“This is the same spot that I’ve worked in all year,” Bazardo said.

Wilson went with his (unnecessarily!) exhausted third-best-at-best reliever rather than his well-rested best reliever in the highest leverage moment in franchise history because the seventh inning guy pitches the seventh and the ninth inning guy pitches the ninth. A potential World Series appearance sacrificed on the altar of rote old-school bullshit.