Not the way we'd like to go into the break. Those wishing for not a walk off got their way today but it wasn't great fun. David Dellucci got his first hit but Raul Chavez didn't get his first walk.
Marc Rzepczynski did a good job in his second big league start. 6 innings 5 hits, 3 walks, 5 strikeouts, 3 earned. 3 straight left handed rookies start for the Jays and three straight good starts, only one win. Shawn Camp gave up an unearned run in an inning of work, Marco Scutaro made just his 3 error of the year to help it along and Jeremy Accardo pitched a scoreless 8th.
Offensively we just didn't do enough, again. 8 hits, 2 each for Scoot and Vernon Wells. These two and Rolen are about the only hitters having a hot July, Vernon is hitting .372/.400/.581 for July. Yeah, I know, he's been hitting good on the road all year we'll believe it when he gets back to Toronto and gives us a couple of weeks of good hitting. Scoot is hitting .357/.404/.476 for July. O fors from Aaron Hill, Alex Rios and Scott Rolen. Rios did get robbed of a home run by a nice catch from Adam Jones. Hill's at .204 for the month so far. Hope he has a lot of fun at the All Star and comes back slugging.
No Jays of the Day today, Scutaro come closest at .050 WPA. Suckage Jay is Aaron Hill (-.185).
Frustrating times, as Cito said:
"We had a road trip where we scored a lot of runs and couldn't hold them, and then we couldn't score any runs," Gaston said. "We hit one day, didn't pitch one day, then we pitch and didn't hit, so that kind of sums up the road trip we just came off of here."
We gave Cito a lot of credit for the hitting at the start of the season, so I guess the proof will be if he can pull them out of their slump now.
I'm hoping there will be a couple of moves over the All-Star break. I'd like to Travis Snider back. A) he can't hit worse than Dellucci and B) even if he does let's let him learn from Cito and Tenance. Bring him up and play him everyday the rest of the way. The other, let Millar go and bring up Randy Ruiz or Brian Dopirak. Again they couldn't do much worse and Millar isn't going to be here next year (oh please let me be right on one) so we might as well take a look at guys that might be here. Give Millar Rance's job. I'm sure he'd do a great job.
Blue Jays vs Orioles boxscore