We've Got Some Bad Blood Brewing With The Jays And The Rays Due To Kevin Kiermaier Taking The Jays Catcher's Pitching Plan Card
Gotta love a division rivalry heating up as the playoffs races are falling into place. The Rays are by far the best team in the AL East, but if you ask me the Jays aren't far behind. No one wants to see Toronto in the playoffs, Tampa included. After this incident I hope we get to see some more games between them because maybe we'll get fireworks. It started last night with Kevin Kiermaier getting thrown out at the plate, he tried the Gary Sanchez late slide thing on Alejandro Kirk and it didn't work. Kirk gets up and jogs off to the dugout after the play and leaves his pitching plan card behind. This is common now with teams, little laminated index cards telling pitchers how to throw to guys, some strategy on there, helps guys communicate with each other too. So ideally you don't want the opposing team to have it. It's not quite a cheat sheet but it would be nice to see how the opposing pitchers are gonna throw to your guys.
Kiermaier sees the card laying on the ground and simply picks it up and jogs to his dugout. What happened to it from there is anyones guess. Maybe he recycled it? Maybe he gave it to a fan, maybe he gave it to Kevin Cash and the Rays hitting coach. The Jays are not happy with it and you can't really blame them. But I also don't have any issue with Kiermaier picking it up. Kirk dropped it and didn't know. That is just one of the potential hazards for carrying it around in your wristband. Kiermaier was trying to give his team a competitive advantage and he found one. It basically fell out in his lap.
The Jays realized what happened and sent their batboy over to get it and the Rays basically told him to get lost. Now we're cooking with gas baby! This time of year you have to do anything you can to get a leg up, I got no problem with this move by Kiermaier and the Rays. But now we sit back to see if KK gets one in the ribs because I'm sure the Jays are fired up. I kinda like the move, snake it till you make it. And before you say it, this is totally different than what Houston did. These guys had it fall right into their lap.