Mark Buehrle was great and Jose Bautista hit 2 home runs, Jays beat Rays

Blue Jays 3 Rays 0

That game had everything I love about baseball. Pitching, defense, power and some interesting manager moves. Oh, and a Jays win.

Mark Buehrle was just amazing. 8.2 innings, 11 strikeouts, just 4 hits allowed, 1 walk and well a shutout. If he could have started last season like this, we would have been happier.To be fair, he had some great defense behind him, which he didn't get at the start of last season. Brett Lawrie made two highlight reel plays. Jonathan Diaz had a couple of nice plays at short, Colby Rasmus went back made two catches on balls hit over his head that I thought he had no chance on and Edwin Encarnacion made a nice grab on a hard hit ball and started a very nice 3-6-3 double play.

On offense, Jose Bautista crushed two home runs. Dioner Navarro drove in the other Blue Jay run with a single, bringing in Edwin from second.

Matt Moore wasn't sharp for the Rays. We had 6 hits, 3 walks and 2 earned off him. We should have scored more.

We had 9 hits in total. 2 each for Melky Cabrera, Bautista, Navarro and Maicer Izturis. Edwin had the other one.

We did have more excitement than we wanted in the bottom of the 9th. Buehrle got the first 2 outs quick, then gave up a hard hit ball right at Lawrie, and Brett whiffed on it. It was hit very hard, and called a single, but Brett clearly felt he should have made the play and finished the shutout for Mark.

Gibby pulled Mark....I wasn't all for that, but I understood why. Sergio Santos came in and gave up a 6 pitch walk to Evan Longoria. I thought Santos got robbed on one of the ball calls. The Rays brought lefty batter Matt Joyce in and Gibbons made the right move, bringing Brett Cecil in to face him. Brett struck Joyce out on 4 pitches, to get his 2nd career save.

There was another interesting moment for the managers. With 2 on and 2 out in the top of the 6th, Maddon took out his lefty starter, and brought in a right-handed reliever to face Jonathan Diaz. Gibby made the right move and pinch hit with Adam Lind. Maddon walked Lind, and brought in a lefty reliever to face Cabrera. Melky popped out to center field.

Jays of the Day are Buehrle (.442 WPA), Bautista (.209) and I'm giving one to Cecil, since he came in with the tying run at the plate.

No Suckage Jays, Moise Sierra had the low number at -.071, for his 0 for 5 with 2 strikeouts. He doesn't look good at the plate right now.

So the Jays are 2-1!

We were down a bit from yesterday's 2000+ comments. Of course, yesterday's game went a very long 3 hours and 32 minutes. Today's game had Mark Buehrle speeding through the batters. It came in at a better 2:55. Still longer than I'd like, but no manager challenges. We had 1686 comments. HeyJays ended Pikachu's 2 game winning streak. Great job HeyJays. And thanks to everyone who joined us, it was a very enjoyable thread. I really enjoyed watching a great game with you all.