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Nice to have an early sweep.
I think we saw the defensive play of the season today. In the 2nd inning, two out and a runner on third, Royal Mich Maier tapped a soft roller towards second. I figured it was one of those lucky hits and it was going to cost us a run, but Kelly Johnson made an amazing flip with his glove and just barely got Maier at first. I can't imagine we'll see a better play this year.
Brandon Morrow had to fight through the game, but he only gave up 1 run in 6.1 innings. Maybe he was lucky he was facing as inept a team as the Royals, but it seemed, that when he needed it, he got the out. He did have a double play turned behind him and a couple of nice plays helping him out. He allowed 7 hits, the only run scoring was a solo homer by Eric Hosmer (a bit of a cheapy). He only had 3 strikeouts. I'm not thrilled with that, I like Morrow because he misses bats, this year, he's not missing as many bats. Maybe he's bought into the 'pitch to contact' stuff, but I hope not. I can't complain too much about his 3.71 ERA, but I'd like to see some strikeouts.
From the pen, Luis Perez pitched a scoreless 1.1 and Francisco Cordero pitched up his second save, allowing just 1 hit in the 9th.
On offense, we had our troubles with Bruce Chen. We only scored 3 runs in 7 innings against someone who couldn't hit 90 on a radar gun in his dreams. Our runs came from a Kelly Johnson solo homer in the first and a 2 run shot from Jose Bautista in the 6th. We got 1 more run in the 9th from a Brett Lawrie triple and a Rajai Davis single to drive him in.
We had 8 hits, 2 for Lawrie, 1 each for everyone else except Yunel Escobar (0 for 4) and Edwin Encarnacion (0 for 4).
Jays of the Day are Morrow (.293 WPA), Kelly (.167), Bautista (.147) and Perez (.129). Yunel had the suckage number at -.116.
We are now 10-6, tied with the Yankees for first in the AL East. Tomorrow night we start a 3 game series in Baltimore. Henderson Alvarez and Tommy Hunter are the starters.