The second half starts the way the first half ended. When you only get 5 hits in a game and 3 of those are from Lyle Overbay, you know you aren't going to get a lot of runs. There really was only one inning that we hit the ball hard too. In the 4th Adam Lind hit the ball as hard as you'll see it hit. But then he made as poor a base running decision as you will see in a while right after. Rolen hit a ground ball to the pitcher Clay Buchholz and Adam for some reason decided to run to 3rd. Just a dumb move. We've seen more than our share of bad base running this year.
Then, in one another one of those moments that seem to keep happening to us, Overbay hit a ground rule double. If the ball hadn't bounced over the wall, Rolen would have scored from 1st on the play. As it turned out neither play cost us because Alex Rios hit a sac fly and scored Rolen and Jose Bautista lined out very hard right at Dustin Pedroia. So, likely, the plays didn't hurt us. Of course, you don't know how different the inning would have been if Lind didn't make the mistake.
Ricky Romero wasn't great. It look like his arm slot was changing by the pitch at times, Maybe the extra rest over the break wasn't good for him. He struck out 8 but walked 5, gave up 5 hits and 4 runs in 4.1 innings. He did make some good pitches but not consistently. Shawn Camp pitched 2.2 perfect innings. I'm not sure what he is doing different this season but he has been really good. Jeremy Accardo and Brandon League each pitched a good inning.
There was a strange moment, when David Dellucci came out of the game in the 8th and John McDonald played the outfield for the first time in his career. Nothing came Mac's way in his 2 inning in left. Dellucci took a pitch off his foot (which he swung at, that pretty much tells you all you need to know about how Dellucci has been doing for us) in the bottom of the 7th. I guess he'll get x-rays and we'll know more tomorrow. Injured or not, maybe we could try someone else in his spot.
Jay of the Day is Lyle Overbay (.121 WPA). Honorable mention to Camp. Suckage Jays are Ricky Romero (-.231), Aaron Hill (-.130) and Rod Barajas (-.107).
Tomorrow at 1:00 Eastern Marc Rzepczynski (0-1, 3.00), who has been great to watch, goes against the Red Sox and Brad Penny (6-3, 4.71). It will be interesting to see who plays in the outfield tomorrow if Vernon Wells still has a stomach flu and Dellucci may have a broken toe. I'm not sure the Jays could get someone to Toronto from Vegas for the game tomorrow if they called them right now. McDonald does have a better than than Dellucci, how sad is that?