Even With Tropicana Against Them, Blue Jays Beat Rays

Blue Jays 6 Rays 2

That was an interesting game. Even with a phantom home run against, the Jays were able to beat the Rays. If you missed it, first inning, 1 out, B.J. Upton hit a fly to medium center field, but high. The ball fell in front of Colby Rasmus, who sort of looked like he lost it. 10 minutes of Umpires meeting and going off to do a video review, it was ruled a home run. Apparently, though no one had video of it, the ball hit a wire on one of the cat walks. Ground rule is that it is a home run. Not only did it cost Kyle Drabek a run, it also had him standing out on the mound for 10 minutes, cooling off his arm and, likely, heating up his emotions.

Kyle Drabek wasn't good, he says in a massive understatement. He walked 6 and threw 2 wild pitches, with only 3 strikeouts. On the other hand, he only allowed 3 hits, one of them the pop fly home run, and 2 singles. He didn't allowed anything hit hard, at all. He had 9 ground outs, 3 fly outs. So, 6 innings, really just 2 single, 2 earned (but one of them really wasn't earned). One of those games where you get to see the potential he has, no one squared up any of his pitches, and you could also see how maddening he is, 64 strikes and 54 balls.

Our bullpen did a great job again, a scoreless inning each from Jason Frasor (helped by a nice throw from Jeff Mathis to catch Ben Zobrist stealing), Francisco Cordero (clean inning, yay) and Casey Janssen (gave up a leadoff single to keep up interested).

On offense we had 8 hits, 2 each for Yunel Escobar, J.P. Arencibia and Rasmus. And single singles for Edwin Encarnacion and Eric Thames.

We scored 1 in the 2nd, on singles by Edwin and Thames, plus a Will Rhymes error. 1 in the 3rd, off a Rasmus double and 2 sac flies. 1 in the 6th on a Yunel homer. And 3 in the 8th, off a Rasmus double, an intention walk and 2 errors by the Rays infielders.

I love when Buck and Pat spend the whole game telling us how the Rays do all the little things right and how they will jump on every mistake, and yet we score 4 unearned runs and the Rays can't do much with 6 walks, an error and 2 wild pitches. It makes life worthwhile.

Jays of the Day are Yunel (.245 WPA), Colby (.114) and Jason (.098). No Suckage Jays, Brett Lawrie has the low mark at -.086 (0 for 4), while being yelled at by the iron throated Rays idiot fan all game long.

Nice to see Colby get a couple line drives to fall in for him. Both doubles. Also nice to see Yunel hit one out. I am thinking that Edwin is playing a pretty decent first base, he seems to understand he has time to knock a ball down, making sure it stays in front of him and know he has time to make the play. He did make a bad toss, from his knees, to Kyle covering first. They gave the error to Drabek but the throw was just behind him. It was a tough play on both sides.

Great win, we are 24 and 19, 3rd place, 1 game back of the 2nd place Rays. Tomorrow we have a battle of rookie pitchers. Drew Hutchison (3-1, 4.81) vs. Matt Moore (1-4, 5.20). Moore the one that was a trendy pick for Rookie of the Year (for those that didn't pick Yu Darvish) and Drew, the one no one figured would be up with the Jays before mid-season, at the earliest. Drew is coming off 2 good starts. Moore has given up 12 earned in his last 3 starts covering 15 innings.