Well, that was closer than it needed to be.
Once again, our offense was great. It took a couple of innings to catch on to what Justin Masterson was throwing, but, once they figured him out, they hit him hard and often:
- We got a run in the 4th when Melky Cabrera's deep fly followed Jose Reyes' triple.
- Another run in the 5th on Juan Francisco's crushed home run.
- And three more in the 6th. Melky walked, Jose Bautista singled and Adam Lind drove them both home with a double and Francisco hit a double of his own.
R.A. Dickey was cruising along until the 7th. Up until then he had allowed just 3 hits and 1 walk for just 1 run. Then, in the 7th, he gave up a leadoff single to Asdrubal Cabrera. David Murphy followed with a hard hit ball right at Brett Lawrie at second base. It could have been a double play, but Lawrie booted it (originally it was called a hit but they corrected the call).
Aaron Loup came in and gave up a run scoring single (if it wasn't hit to Bautista, 2 runs would have scored) and a sac fly to make it a 1-run game. But a Michael Brantley line out to Reyes ended the inning. Thank goodness.
Up by 4 in the 7th, I felt that Steve Tolleson should have come in to play second to let Lawrie go back to third, improving the infield defense. A walk and a hit batter batter later, a run was in and and the bases were loaded. He did come into the game in the bottom of the 9th as a pinch runner for Francisco.
Dickey ended up with 6 plus innings, 4 hits, 2 walks, 6 strikeouts and 2 earned. Of course there were the 2 unearned runs.
Brett Cecil gave up 2 hits, but got 2 strikeouts in a scoreless 8th. The inning ended on a beautiful throw from Melky, getting the runner at the plate. I didn't think Melky had that good an arm. And Casey Janssen got his first save of the season, giving up just a bloop single in the 9th. Man, I've missed Casey.
Jays of the Day are Janssen (.169 WPA), Cecil (.124), Loup (.116, so fortunate that the line drive was hit at Reyes) and Francisco (.180). And I'm giving one to Melky for that great throw. Honorable mention to Lind and Dickey.
No Suckage Jays. Edwin Encarnacion and Kevin Pillar had rough days at the plate both going 0 for with 2 strikeouts. Edwin made a couple of nice plays at first base, to make up for the bad bat, and with as hot as he's been, he deserves a day when the other batters carry him.
Gibby's reworking of the batting order worked out very well. He deserves credit for that.
40 games in and we are 20-20. It feels like we should be so much better than that but, considering we were 16-24 at this point last year, we should be happy. At the moment we are 2 games back of the O's (who are losing to the Tigers as I type this). If the Red Sox and Yankees don't make big comebacks in their games tonight, we will be tied for 2nd place.
We had a very nice 1071 comments in our GameThread. Hathorian was the big winner, great job sir.
# | Commenter | # Comments |
---|---|---|
1 | Hathorian | 108 |
2 | MjwW | 76 |
3 | Tom Dakers | 75 |
4 | Kraemer_17 | 73 |
5 | Diamond_D86 | 61 |
6 | ABsteve | 57 |
7 | Bowling_Guy25 | 55 |
8 | JaysCraze | 53 |
9 | Gerse | 47 |
10 | Maple Man | 42 |
11 | publius varrus | 41 |
12 | pashwell | 36 |
13 | fishedin | 36 |
14 | jNameless One | 34 |
15 | Playoffs!!!!1 | 32 |
16 | Pikachu | 30 |
17 | bluejays13 | 25 |
18 | jaysfan100 | 23 |
19 | erik.t | 16 |
20 | MartsB | 15 |
21 | e&n4e | 14 |
22 | panz04er | 11 |
23 | JaysfanDL | 11 |
24 | REMO | 10 |
25 | Redonred | 10 |
26 | gabrielsyme | 10 |