Jays Bullpen Loses Another. Some Scoring Would Be Nice Too.

Orioles 6 Blue Jays 4

This will be a quick recap, because I want to go eat and I want to go forget. This was an irritating game.

Henderson Alvarez wasn't great but he did pitch us 7 innings and left with a lead (I'm sure I wrote the same thing yesterday about Brandon Morrow). Alvarez gave up 6 hits, 3 earned, 1 walk and 2 k, with a home run. He wasn't helped out by a pretty inconsistent strike zone, he did leave too many pitches up, but with all that, we should be happy with 7 innings and only 3 runs against.

Casey Janssen came out for the 8th and gave up a game tying home run, give us our 25 (seems like it and I don't want to look it up) blown save of the season. But he got out of the inning with just the one run scoring and a tie game. Francisco Cordero gave up a 2 run homer in the 9th to get the loss. Being fair, the pitch hit out was about 3 inches from the ground, I'm not sure how Nolan Reimold got enough bat on it to hit it out.

On offense, Kelly Johnson hit his 3rd home run of the season. Colby Rasmus had 3 hits and 2 RBI. Brett Lawrie had 2 singles and a walk in 4 plate appearances. Yunel Escobar and J.P. Arencibia had the only 0 fors of the day. Yunel was robbed twice on hard hit balls. JP? Well, he seems to be working the count well, but then, when he gets to a full count, he can't do anything.

Brett Lawrie tried to steal home, with the bases loaded, 2 out, 2 strikes on Jose Bautista and was tagged out. I wasn't a fan, I think you have to give Jose the chance to drive in runs there. Brett was also thrown out trying to steal second, later in the game. Trying to steal off Matt Wieters is a mistake.

We had 10 hits, we should have scored more. The bullpen hasn't been good, but we should be scoring more.

Jays of the Day? Colby had a .287 WPA and made a good catch in the field. Edwin had a .094, but some of that was for reaching on a Wilson Betemit error. He also moved from first to second on a Eric Thames fly to the wall but I don't think that's enough for JoD. Henderson Alvarez gets an .097 and did good for someone that didn't have his best stuff going in, so I'll give him one.

Suckage? Cordero (-.399 and the last), JP (-.293, mostly off a DP ball in the 9th when we really needed something out of him) and Casey (-.124 for the blown save).

Tomorrow we try to salvage something in this series with the O's. Kyle Drabek gets the start. 1:00 Eastern. Join us in the thread. The thread was fun today, despite the loss, which, understandably causes some short tempers.

You know, if we get 7 innings out of our starters, we should be getting wins. And against the O's we should be getting runs.