Blue Jays 1 Tigers 11: Let's drink

Blue Jays 1 Tigers 11

That was awful in so many ways.

Josh Johnson's fastball was only getting to the high 80's on the radar gun, and he didn't seem to be able to hit the strike zone with anything else. To make excuses for him, it was cold and raining hard. He gave up 7 hits, 2 walks and 6 earned in 1.1 innings. He didn't have all that many hard hit balls against, many of the harder hit things found a glove, the only extra base hit, against Josh, was a triple by Miguel Cabrera that Rajai Davis, well I can't really explain what Rajai did, but he ended up falling into the wall. From the ground, he tossed the ball to Colby Rasmus who threw the ball into the infield. Once again, we had a lot of ground balls missing fielders, but Josh was not good.

Relievers Edgar Gonzalez, Esmil Rogers and Steve Delabar weren't all that much better, giving up 5 earned in 6.2 between them.

We didn't do all that much on offense either, though 9 hits and 2 walks should have added up to more than 1 run. There was a moment in the 3rd inning when I thought we might score some runs. 2 on, no outs, with Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion coming up. Jose ground into a force at third, but Edwin singled. Unfortunately, for us, third base coach Luis Rivera waved home Melky Cabrera, apparently not noticing the piano that Melky was dragging behind him. Melky was out at the plate.

Not to beat on the obvious, but down 6-1 at the time, there is no way you should be sending a runner unless you are sure he'll score. We could have had the bases loaded, with one out, just 1 big hit from being back in the game. Instead we were 2 out, runners on first and second and were quickly out of the inning. It was just dumb baseball. It took the wind out of our sails, not that there was all that much wind in them.

And, on defense, we gave Miguel Cabrera a steal of third, in the first inning, by having Mark DeRosa play so far off the bag, that even though Johnson had stepped off, Miguel beat DeRosa to it. A stolen base against in J.P. Arencibia's column and he wasn't part of the play. It cost us a run, which didn't turn out to be important, but we didn't know that at the time.

Jays of the Day: There wasn't any. High mark goes to Rajai Davis (.064 WPA). He

Suckage: Johnson (-.427) was the only one to get the number. But really most of the team deserves the award.

Once again, we had a surprisingly lively GameThread, even with the lousy result in an afternoon game. 1119 comments from 68 grumpy commenters.

Congratulations Jay182, though you do owe me part of the title for keeping an argument going. Yes I was one of the grumpy commentators. Sorry.

Tomorrow the Jays will be in Kansas City to curl up and die at the feet of battle the Royals.