Four straight wins and baseball is fun again.
The last time the Jays batted around first inning two consecutive games was back in 1994. April 10 and 11, 1994 the Jays batted around against the Mariners and the A's. In the first game, Joe Carter homered and the second game Carlos Delgado homered. Dave Stewart and Pat Hentgen were the lucky starters.We were 6-1 after those two wins. The rest of the season didn't go quite so well.
Again tonight, we got help from the Giant's defense to bat around in the first. Jose Bautista reached on a Marco Scutaro error to start it off. Edwin Encarnacion walked, then Angel Pagan missed an easy fly ball from J.P. Arencibia. It he the side of his glove. Jose and Edwin both scored on the play, Edwin almost running up Jose's back. After that Adam Lind homered. Brett Lawrie single, Colby Rasmus was "hit by pitch". It missed him, but we'll take it. Emilio Bonifacio singled to bring home our 5th run. Munenori Kawasaki lined into a double play to finally end the inning.
That was all the runs we'd need, but Arencibia hit a two run homer in the 2nd. Walks to Kawasaki and Cabrera, plus a Bautista double and an Encarnacion sac fly got us 2 more in the 3rd. A Colby Rasmus RBI double, in the 5th, got us to 11 runs.
In our last three games we have scored 33 runs. I don't think we scored 33 runs in all of April, but then I was drinking a lot that month.
We had 11 hits and 5 walks tonight. Everyone in the starting lineup had hit, except for Kawasaki, who took a walk. Bautista, Arencibia and Lind had 2 hits each. And finally, Bonifacio got his batting average up to .200, so every in the lineup is .200 or better. The only Jay now hitting under .200 is Henry Blanco.
Ramon Ortiz had a very good start. 7 innings, 6 hits, 1 walk, 1 earned, 1 k. Yeah, he had some BABIP luck, but the Giants didn't have many hard hits off him. Mickey Storey pitched the last 2 innings, giving up a couple of runs, but the game was well in hand by then.
Jays of the Day: JP (.215 WPA) and Lind (.129). I'm also going to give one to Ortiz, his WPA was only .012 (tough for a pitcher to get a high score when the offense scores 10 in the first 3 innings), but 7 innings of 1 run ball from a guy that is going to turn 40 in a week, is worth a JoD to me.
No Suckage Jays. Kawasaki had the low mark at -.035.
Oh, and I didn't win anything at the Jays Care Auction. I gave it a run, but the one I wanted went for over $5000 and that was too rich for a blogger. I'm not sure Jays Care would accept cheese doodles for payment anyway.
Even with the issues SB Nation is having, we had 927 comments from 52 commenters. Maj. Major Major Major led the way, giving it 100%, a very gritty performance.
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