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I'll admit, I sort of feel sorry for Eric Thames. He gets his first home run of the season. He really crushed it, hit a mile. But, then he had two misplays in the field. In the first inning J.J. Hardy hit a ball over his head, Thames chased it to the wall, but got too close and the ball bounced past him. It didn't cost us anything, Colby Rasmus backed up the play. Then in the 4th, Matt Wieters hit a high fly to the wall, Eric ran a long way, jumped at the wall and it went off his glove and over the wall. It was so close to a great catch. I've watched the highlight a couple of dozen times now and I'm pretty sure that the ball wouldn't have gone over the fence if it hadn't bounced off his glove.
Henderson Alvarez had a great game, 7 innings, 5 hits, 2 earned, 2 walks, 0 strikeouts, 15 ground outs, 5 fly outs. If we could have given him just a little offense he could have had his second career win. He had some troubles in the first, loading the bases on a single, double and a walk. Then he turned things around, getting Adam Jones to hit into a double play, scoring the run and Matt Wieters to ground out. That and the home run off Eric's glove were all the runs the O's would get.
Casey Janssen, working for the first time in 10 days, pitched a scoreless 8th, getting 2 strikeouts.
Our offense did nothing, we only had 5 hits, 2 each for Thames and Kelly Johnson and 1 for Brett Lawrie. It was just a bad night for our bats.
Jays of the Day are Alvarez (.120 WPA) and Johnson (.118). Suckage awards go to just about everyone else: Rasmus (-.180), Escobar (-.171), Bautista (-.162), Edwin (-.159) and Lind (-.107).
It's a long season, there are going to be games like this, hopefully not too many more. Tomorrow night Kyle Drabek hopes to get more run from our offense.