My old heart can't take another game like that.
Brett Cecil had a long hard 9th. Coming in up 5-2 he made us all nervous. He gave up a a lead off single (despite a great effort by Josh Donaldson, diving and throwing across the diamond from his seat, a bloop single to right and a hit batter. Another bloop single for Adam Jones and it was suddenly a 1-run game. MAN.
But finally, Brett got Chris Davis to chase strike three, on a full count. Navarro didn't catch the ball, but made the throw to first for the final out. And I felt like I ran a marathon. Brett didn't give up anything hit hard...but it was a tough 9th.
Before that it was the Marco Estrada show. He was terrific. He did give up a few walks, 4, but he didn't allow a hit through 7 innings. Then, leading off the 8th, pinch hitter Jimmy Paredes blooped one into left, just too far out for Jose Reyes to get to it. You'd like the first hit to be something hit hard, but he was up to 118 pitches. In total, 1 hit, 4 walks, 6 strikeouts, in 7 innings plus 1 batter.
After Marco left, the 8th inning became a mess. Roberto Osuna came in, got a strikeout, then 2 bloop singles. Then, on a 3-1 pitch, Roberto came too far in on Adam Jones and hit him, getting an automatic ejection for himself and DeMarco Hale, our acting manager of the moment. In reality, Bucknor didn't need to eject them, Bucknor had to know there was no intent there. Umpires have to know what's happening in the game. It was stupid umpiring.
Steve Delabar came in and got us out of the inning, with just 2 Oriole runs scoring.
Offensively, the Orioles still haven't figured out that you shouldn't hit Jose Bautista. Not that I think Mike Wright intended to hit him, but he got Jose in the first inning, which caused umpire CB Bucknor to warn both benches. Which in turn, caused John Gibbons to come out and complain that his team didn't deserve to be warned, since they didn't do anything wrong (very true), which got Gibby throw out of the game in record time. I couldn't believe how quick Bucknor's thumb was there.
Anyway, Edwin Encarnacion and Justin Smoak followed with back-to-back doubles to put us up 2-0 after 1.
We got 2 more in the second, on 4 walks, sandwiched around a Jose Reyes single.
And we got 1 more run in the 3rd. Chris Colabello had a hustle double to right, I thought he was going to be out, but the ball got away from the shortstop at second and he went to third and scored on Dioner Navarro's sac fly.
We had 9 hits on the day and 6 walks. Everyone got on base at least once except Navarro, who had the sac fly and hit the ball hard two other times, unfortunately to the big part of center field.
Jays of the Day: Estrada (.202) and Encarnacion (.151). I'm going to give a honorable mention to Bautista for a)keeping his cool and b) drawing a bases loaded walk and another walk.
No one had the Suckage number. Osuna came closer at -.086 if he hadn't been thrown out of the game, he would have lowered that number.
That was just a wow. I need a shower.
We had 910 comments in the GameThread. Diamond_D86 led us to victory....next time, lets not end so exciting ok?
# | Commenter | # Comments |
---|---|---|
1 | Diamond_D86 | 109 |
2 | T-Ball | 100 |
3 | Tom Dakers | 99 |
4 | Belisarius | 72 |
5 | Alan F. | 61 |
6 | radivel | 53 |
7 | Pikachu | 43 |
8 | MjwW | 37 |
9 | DangYouToHeck | 37 |
10 | fatpuppy | 34 |
11 | erik.t | 32 |
12 | lalalaprise | 26 |
13 | jimitwist | 26 |
14 | Pillar for President | 25 |
15 | the_tbj_fan | 21 |
16 | LeafFan1989 | 16 |
17 | bryfryy | 14 |
18 | Bowling_Guy25 | 11 |
19 | Raffa | 11 |
20 | REMO | 10 |
21 | KevinInCT | 10 |