Blue Jays 7 Orioles 3: Jays pen puts up 5 scoreless innings

Blue Jays 7 Orioles 3

Now that was more like it.

We have a heck of a bullpen. Today they pitched 5 scoreless inning, allowing just 3 hits and 3 walks (at least one of them an Angel Hernandez special), with 5 strikeouts. Aaron Loup went 1.1 and got the win. Dustin McGowan also went 1.1, with 2 strikeouts. Brett Cecil 1.0, with 2 strikeouts. Steve Delabar got the last out in the 8th, then had some troubles in the 9th, mostly troubles with getting Angel to call a strike. Casey Janssen picked him up, striking out two to get his 18th save.

Todd Redmond wasn't as great. He gave up 4 hits, 2 home runs, a walk and 3 runs, in 4 inning. He also struck out 6. He had his moments and really did what we needed him to, considering we have all those guys in the pen and the All-Star break coming up. I hope we don't see him make more starts for us.

It was nice to see the offense get it going. We had 12 hits and 3 walks. 3 hits for Maicer Izturis. 2 each for Adam Lind and Colby Rasmus. Everyone else had 1 hit accept our second baseman, Brett Lawrie. Even Emilio Bonifacio had a good day at the plate, going 1 for 2, with a walk and a hit by pitch. Unfortunately, he was caught stealing twice. We shouldn't be trying to steal against Matt Wieters, though, the second time, with two outs, getting caught let the next inning start with Jose Reye leading off. So it was likely worth the shot.

Edwin Encarnacion crushed a solo homer in the first. J.P. Arencibia hit a 2-run, bases loaded single, in the sixth, making up for a strikeout with runners on the corner in the fourth. We got 3 more in the 7th, one on an Jose Bautista RBI double. One on a line drive by Adam Lind, that hit Chris Davis' glove but he couldn't catch it. Unfortunately he picked it up in time to force Edwin at second. And the last on a soft ground out by Colby.

Jays of the Day are Arencibia (.155, plus a nice throw to catch Davis trying to steal), McGowan (.109 WPA), Encarnacion (.107) and Izturis (.098).

Suckage goes to Redmond (-.141).

Lawrie had a bad day at the plate, in his first game back. On defense, I think he only had 2 chance in the field. An easy pop up and a ground ball, that he made a less than perfect throw to second for a force out at second. I'm not sure if there was the possibility of a double play, the ball wasn't hard hit, but the throw didn't help.

We had a nice GameThread, 40 of us put up 680 comments. I led the way, just beating out Belisarius.