Jays 8 Twins 6
Well the good news is we won, but the bad news is that Jesse Litsch left the game with soreness in his right elbow. Apparently he will have an MRI tomorrow and we'll know more sometime after that. I would be very much surprised if he didn't end up on the DL. Hopefully not for long but, well lets wait till we know more.
The game, well Jesse went 3 innings and 2 batters, he had two good innings, the 1st and 3rd but the second inning wasn't good. He gave up a lead off home, got 2 outs then gave up 3 straight singles that scored two more runs. One of the runs should be charged to Travis Snider though, he backed off on a fly single he to him then made a poor decision to throw to 3rd, too late to get the runner and allowing the batter to get to second. Then the next single scored both runners. I am starting the think that Adam Lind is the better fielder. Litsch gave up a double and a triple in the 4th inning before leaving with the injury .
Brian Tallet came in and stranded the runner at 3rd. Tallet pitched 3 innings and gave up 2 runs, not great but the team needed innings, so you have to cheer the effort. Jason Frasor pitched a scoreless 7th, Scott Downs allowed a lead off double in the 8th then struck out the side. Then the moment we all were dreading, BJ Ryan came in the 9th for the save. He gave up a lead off single but then got a nicely turned double play. After another single, got Jason Kubel to pop up to end the game, earning his first save of the season. I hope this is a sign that he's turning things around and that this is the first of many saves.
Offensively, isn't this a wonderful change from last year, we have a team that can score runs? This is our 4th comeback win of the season. 4 comeback wins in our first 8 games. Pretty cool, eh? Offensive heroes? Moonraker (Travis Snider) hit 2 homers. Lyle Overbay had his first homer of the season and drove in 3. Aaron Hill, Alex Rios and Scott Rolen each had 3 hits. Vernon Wells, Adam Lind, and Rod Barajas, as well as Snider and Overbay had 2 hits. The only ofer of the night was Marco Scutaro, but it is tough to get on him, he has been smoking the ball and his defense has been just amazing.
Jays of the Day: Snider (.385 WPA), Barajas (.174), Rolen (.118) and Overbay (.110). Pitching wise Ryan (.097), Downs (.093) and Frasor (.090) are all on the borderline. I'm going to give one to Ryan and Downs. Totally arbitrarily. Suckage Jays, as much as I hate to add insult to injury (literally) Litsch was a -.385 and Wells despite 2 hits was a -.105 popping up twice when we really could have used a hit. He swung at a pitch that I'm sure was over his head. Sometimes he doesn't seem at all locked in at the plate. He is hitting .333 so it is hard to rag on him, but he seems to be way over anxious at the plate when there are runners in scoring position.
So odds are Litsch goes on the DL tomorrow. I would expect the Jays to call up a reliever, likely Accardo, though maybe Dirk Hayhurst because Hayhurst is able to pitch more than 1 inning and we might need that. He made a start in Vegas. Then a starter would be called up Saturday when Litsch's turn comes around. I would imagine the starter called up would be Brett Cecil though he was hit hard today, 5 runs in 4 inning, only 2 earned though. I'd love to watch Cecil so that is who I'll hope they call up and since he started today he'd be right on schedule.
There are a couple of other things that happened in baseball today. First, Mark Fidrych died in a farm accident. He was 54. Mark was AL Rookie of the Year in 1976, when he went 19-9 with a 2.34 ERA at 21 years old. He also had 24 complete games. Can you imagine a manager having a 21 year old complete 24 games now? Can you imagine anyone completing 24 games now? He pitched 10 innings or more in 5 games. So no surprise his arm was ruined, over the next 4 seaosns he made a handful of starts, but he was never the same.
Mark was weird. He talked to the ball on the mound, he'd fix cleat marks in the mound on his hands and knees, he'd throw balls back to the umpire to be removed from the game, saying they had 'hits in them'. The Tigers would sell out when he pitched and when he didn't well they didn't draw much of a crowd. He was different. He was fun. He played before I was interested in baseball, when I was very young, but kids loved him, I thought he was very cool. He wrote an autobiography 'No Big Deal' which I remember taking out from my school's library.
In much better news, the Yankees lost big today 15-5 to the Rays. Chien-Ming Wang was clubbed for his inning plus of work. He has an ERA of 28.93 after 2 starts. Also today Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko had back-to-back homers and the cool thing was it was the 300th homer for each of them. Very cool. Also today, former Jay Orlando Hudson became the first Dodger to hit for the cycle since Wes Parker in 1970. And the Mets had their first game at new Citi Field, a loss but can't have everything. Or maybe you can, apparently you can get 82 different kinds of beer there. Will have to get there sometime.
And hey we are still in 1st, a half game up on the Orioles.