Adam Lind homers, Blue Jays beat Rays

Blue Jays 4 Rays 2

Now that was much better.

Drew Hutchison had a very nice start. 5.1 innings, 3 hits, 3 walks with 4 strikeouts. He threw 83 pitches, 50 strikes. I'm happy with Gibby for taking him out at 83 pitches. No use pushing it in his first start of the year.

Aaron Loup pitched 1.2 scoreless innings, coming into the game with 2 on and 1 out and getting out of it. Then pitching a clean 7th. Steve Delabar gave up a couple of hits and a run in his inning. And Sergio Santos made his first save of the season a little more exciting than we would have liked. He gave up 2 doubles, a walk, and a double steal, in between striking out the side in the 9th.  We could have done without the excitement.

We got all the offense we needed in the first inning, when Adam Lind hit a 3-run homer, to straightaway center field. Jonathan Diaz drove in our other run with his first major league hit.

We had 6 hits in all. 2 for Lind and Melky Cabrera and 1 each for Colby Rasmus (a double) and Diaz. We also took 5 walks, 2 for Jose Bautista. The only batters not to reach were Edwin Encarnacion, Dioner Navarro and Ryan Goins, who all went 0 for 4.

It was a particularly good day for Diaz, with the RBI single, a walk and stolen base. He had a little slip on a ground ball but he was lucky that the batter wasn't running hard down the line.

Navarro threw out Matt Joyce trying to steal in the first inning. I think I'm going to like Navarro.

Jays of the Day: Hutchison (.158 WPA), Line (.270), Loup (.094) and I'm going to give one to Diaz too.

No Suckage Jays, Edwin had the low mark at -.066.

The two GameThreads had 2018 comments, thanks all. Pikachu and Bowling Guy tie for the lead. Good work you two.