Blue Jays 4 Red Sox 5: Jose Bautista's game tying homer wasted

Blue Jays 4 Red Sox 4

Once against Jose ties a game in the 9th.

Then Josh Thole blows it in the bottom of the inning.

Juan Perez came to start the 9th, a single and a walk, with an out mixed in. Gibby brough Casey Janssen in. Janssen got the ground ball to first, what we should have wanted, but Thole booted it and we lose on an error.

I don't understand why Gibby went with Perez. Perez has been good and all, but that's a pretty big spot and we have Delabar, Cecil, Janssen and Oliver. Why would you go with someone from the back of the line?

The game was almost about all about the 6th inning. Josh Thole, Rajai Davis and Colby Rasmus loaded the bases, with no outs. In retrospect, Thole should have scored on the Rasmus single, but with no one out, it didn't seem like there was a reason to chance it. But J.P. Arencibia went 7 pitches before popping out. Maicer Izturis did the same on the third pitch. And pinch hitter Emilio Bonifacio struck out. Very sad inning.

The Red Sox got 3 runs in the 2nd. Singles by Mike Napoli and Daniel Nava, followed by a pop up, ground rule double, down the 1st base line, that Jose Bautista, Adam Lind and Munenori Kawasaki couldn't get to. A Brandon Snyder double and we were down 3. They got 1 more in the 5th on a Jonny Gomes double.

Mark Buehrle wasn't terrible, but he wasn't great. The popup double cost him. In total 6 innings, 7 hits, 4 earned, 1 walk, 4 k.

Dustin McGowan looked great in his 2 innings of work, allowing just 1 hit with 2 strikeouts.

On offense we got 2 in the 4th, off singles from Edwin Encarnacion, Davis and Ramus (scoring Edwin) and a run scoring ground out from Maicer.

A Jose Reyes solo homer made it a 1 run game in the 7th and the other Jose tied it in the 9th.

Jays of the Day: Bautista (.382 WPA), Rasmus (.123) and I'm give one to McGowan (.088) for the 2 innings of terrific relief.

Suckage: Janssen had the number but that was the Thole error. Bonifacio (-.168), Buehrle (-.121), Thole (-.119 + the error), JP (-.118) and Izturis (-.105).

Really Gibby should get the Suckage award for the bullpen choice in the 9th, just one day after I wrote about his maddening use of the bullpen, back here. This is the same again. Big moment, use your best. A couple of days ago, Perez was the mop up guy, today he pitches the bottom of the 9th in a tie game.

Adam Lind came out of the game with a back 'tightness' issue. Thole went in to take his spot. It sounds like Lind will be out for a few days, likely not going on the DL right now. We really could use a bat to fill in. 8 guys in the pen and Lind injured leaves us 2 bats on the bench. That's not a good way to go.

63 of us put up 949 comments in our GameThread on a Sunday afternoon. junior_felix_jr led the way. Great job.