Great start for R.A. Dickey, Jays beat Red Sox

Red Sox 1 Blue Jays 7

An excellent start for R.A. Dickey and (more surprisingly) John Gibbons didn't wait too too long to pull him. Maybe a tiny bit too long, but not until he blew the game, this time. Dickey went 6.1, allowed just 5 hits, 1 earned and no walks. That was his first start as a Blue Jay without giving up a walk. That is hard to believe. He did have a hit batter. So good to see him have a great start.

And our bats got going:

• Brett Lawrie had a solo homer in the 2nd.
• A Josh Thole single, Jonathan Diaz bunt and Melky Cabrera double gave us the lead in the 3rd.
• In the 7th Edwin Encarnacion and Lawrie doubled. Lawrie went to third on a Juan Francisco deep fly out and then scored on a Moises Sierra ground out to pitcher Jon Lester. Lawrie was off on contact, but we were lucky, Lester seemed to have trouble getting a grip on the ball.
• The 8th inning was particularly fun. Jose Reyes singled on a ball that Dustin Pedroia made a great play on, but Jose was too fast. Then, Melky popped on up behind the plate but David Ross over ran it and had it pop out of his glove. Cabrera made him pay for the mistake, hitting a single to right. Reyes was stealing on the play and he slid into second, looked around, got up and ran and slid into third. Jose Bautista hit a ground ball to short that Xander Bogaerts fumbled. It was ruled a hit, but should have been an error. Then Edwin doubled to the wall to score both Cabrera and Bautista.

We had 9 hits off Jon Lester and the Red Sox pen and no walks. Neither team took a base on balls today.  We had two hits from Melky, Edwin (two doubles) and Brett (double and home run). Edwin was 2 for 4 but hit the ball very hard each time up. Nice to see him hitting the ball hard. Thole was 1 or 3, dropping his batting average to .500. 0 fors went to Juan Francisco (who hit a couple of deep flies), Sierra (who had an RBI) and Diaz (who had a sac bunt).

Our bullpen did a great job too. Steve Delabar came in with runners on 2nd and 3rd and one out, in the 7th, with just a 1 run lead and got out of it without a run scoring. Then he pitched a scoreless 8th. Esmil Rogers struck out the side in the 9th.

Jays of the Day are Dickey (.102 WPA), Delabar (.309), Lawrie (.166) and Cabrera (.092).

No Suckage Jays.

Bautista did fine in CF, but did give us a scare in the 8th, taking less than the most graceful route to a catch on a ball that was hit over his head.

We had a very pleasant GameThread, 880 comments, pretty good for a Sunday afternoon. rob.magnifiecent led the way, great job leading us to a win.