The game turned on a terrible Jose Reyes error in the bottom of the 8th. Gordon Beckham rolled a ball to Reyes and Reyes brought his glove up and the ball stayed down, rolling through his legs. Really, it couldn't have been an easier play and doing it late in a close game hurts. It looked, for a moment, like Mark Buehrle was going to get out of it. He got 2 quick outs, Jose Bautista made a great catch on a ball in foul territory and a Carlos Sanchez line out to Kevin Pillar.
But two soft singles hit in front of Pillar and a Melky Cabrera double down the left field line and our 2-1 lead becomes 4-2 for them. Pillar might have been playing too deep, the Jose Abreu single was one that I thought would be caught.
Errors happen, and a team should be able to deal with an error. It shouldn't be a killer, but Reyes has to make that play.
Buehrle was terrific, all 4 runs were unearned. The White Sox first run came on a Jose Bautista throwing error. On a Avisail Garcia single to right, with Melky on first, Bautista tried to throw behind Garcia, the throw bounced and Chris Colabello couldn't handle it. It hit him in the chest and bounced away and Cabrera scored. If his arm was 100%, that's a play Bautista makes but he really shouldn't have tried it there.
Buehrle deserved better, complete 8 inning game, 9 hits allowed, 7 singles and 2 doubles, 4 runs, none earned, no walks and 2 strikeouts. He did get some good defense too: Colabello started a great 3-6-3 double play in the third inning. The Jays turned 3 double plays on the day. Russell Martin made a great catch on a bunt popped up behind him. Bautista made a tremendous catch in the right field foul territory. Donaldson made a great barehanded play on a soft ground ball.
On offense, we didn't do much against Chris Sale, but it was almost enough. Our scoring came on solo homers from Colabello and Donaldson. We had 6 hits in all, no walks and 6 strikeouts. Only striking out 6 times is pretty good vs Sale. On top of the 6 hits, there were a number of hard hit balls that found gloves.
One of the cooler parts of this game was that the Jays won two reviews. After that awful play call and equally awful review of the play at the plate, the other day, I didn't think we could possibly win a review, but I was wrong. It isn't the first time.
- Leading off the 4th inning, a Sale pitch came very low and in on Josh Donaldson. I thought he was hit, but the umpire didn't. Though to blame him, can't really see the batter's back foot from behind the catcher. Gibby challenged and, after four minutes, they finally saw what we saw right away and overturned the call.
- Then in the bottom of the inning, with Garcia on first, Adam LaRoche lined a pitch right at first baseman Colabello, who quickly tagged a diving Garcia in the legs as his hands were reaching for the bag. Again, can't blame the umpire, he's trying to watch the hands reaching for the bag and the tag on the legs, no way you can see both at the same time. But, after way too long, the replay umpires saw it.
Jays of the Day: By the numbers, it is Josh Donaldson (.209 WPA). I'm going to give one to Colabello too. And I'm giving one to Buehrle.
Suckage: Reyes of course. And, by the numbers, Valencia (-.248) and Bautista (-.126, plus the error).
Tomorrow is another day, but man I thought we had this one. We really have to start taking Reyes out of games, when we have a lead.
We had 925 comments, in the GameThread, pretty good considering it was a 1:54 game. That's pretty amazing to have a game under 2 hours with 2 long review.
# | Commenter | # Comments |
---|---|---|
1 | Pikachu | 104 |
2 | T-Ball | 99 |
3 | DangYouToHeck | 95 |
4 | Tom Dakers | 82 |
5 | Alan F. | 67 |
6 | MjwW | 61 |
7 | Belisarius | 59 |
8 | lalalaprise | 54 |
9 | Mike Hannah | 28 |
10 | Janz_V84 | 25 |
11 | bryfryy | 23 |
12 | Frag | 22 |
13 | fatpuppy | 17 |
14 | MartsB | 15 |
15 | SayWord13 | 15 |
16 | hpatton | 14 |
17 | fishedin | 13 |
18 | REMO | 12 |
19 | St.Sniper | 11 |
20 | LeafFan1989 | 11 |