The Rays playoff chances got a little slimmer tonight as the Jays rolled into Tampa Bay and came close to blanking the home side. Brandon Morrow threw great for 7 innings and the Jays got to Price for 5 runs which is more then they needed. With the rain out in New York and the loss tonight, Tampa Bay falls to 2.5 back of the Red Sox for the wild card with only 5 games left to play. I'm not a big fan of the Rays at all, especially since they started to get successful, you can only hear "See do it like the Rays" so many times before you develop a tick and start yelling at people when they say stuff like that.
As mentioned above Brandon Morrow was great tonight, he threw 7 strong innings with only 2Hs and 4BBs he struck out 9, he ran into a little trouble in the 7th but was able to get out of it without too much concern. The bigger news tonight was that he got his first double play since 2010. According to our very own statsman MinorLeaguer this was a streak of 174 straight innings(0.1 IP from Aug 28 right after his GIDP, 3.0 from Sep 3, 166.1 this year, 4.1 this game before his GIDP = 174), quite impressive. <<Side note: Elias is saying 173.1IP>> I would have loved to see him get the record as a weird quirk but oh well. Joel Carreno came out for the 8th and allowed BJ Upton to reach but he was thrown out trying to steal second on a great throw from Arencibia from his knees. Luis Perez came in for the ninth and did his best Kevin Gregg impression by walking Johnny Damon to lead off the inning, things didn't exactly go smoothly as the Rays were able to push a single run across but that was all.
At the plate the Jays got a bit of help from two throwing errors by David Price, one of which allowed two runs to score. Kelly Johnson had a strong game with an RBI hit and a big time HR to right, he was a good at bat going left on left against Price. McCoy and Thames each had a hit apiece with Bautista and McCoy taking a walk each. J.P Arencibia had a 2-4 night with a squeaker of an infield single in the top of the ninth. The Jays didn't produce a lot at the plate but it was more then enough tonight.
Jays of the Day: Morrow .256 and Thames .214
No suckage although Encarnacion came closest at -0.86 Nevermind
Tomorrow night the Jays look to really put a dagger into the Rays with another 7PM start, see you then!