More on last night's win

Astros 2 Blue Jays 5

Back to .500, I wonder how often I'll be saying that this season?

Mark Buehrle got his second win of the season, but it wasn't pretty. He allowed 8 hits and a walk, in his 5.1 innings. Many of the hits weren't of the really hard hit variety, but he wasn't good. You do have to admire his ability to give up that many hits (including 3 doubles) and allowing just one run.

After two starts Buehrle has a 0.64 ERA

Our offense still hasn't gotten it together, even if that's the most runs we've scored this season. We scored 5 runs off just 5 hits, though the 6 walks is a hopeful sign. Of our 5 hits, 4 were for extra bases: A solo homer for Jose Bautista, a 2-run homer for Melky Cabrera and 2 doubles for Dioner Navarro, each driving in a run.

Cabrera and Bautista are tied for the league lead in home runs at 4. Melky has homered in 4 straight games now.

Surprisingly enough, with all the talk about Kevin Seitzer and hitting the other way and a two strike approach, 15 of our 27 runs came off home runs. As a team we are hitting ..216 after 8 games.

Adam Lind DH, even with the lefty starting, and Gibby put him in the 2 spot in the order, citing Houston's starter Brett Oberholtzer reverse splits. It didn't work out, Lind was 0 for 4, with 2 strikeouts. Brett Lawrie was also 0 for 4 with 2 k and Colby Rasmus had the same 0 for 4 with 2 k. Maicer Izturis was 0 for 3 with 1 k.

There are two parts of the team that are working, game in and game out. Our bullpen and our defense.

The bullpen allowed just 1 run over the last 3.2 innings. Steve Delabar came in, for Buehrle, with a runner on first and 1 out, and got out of the 6th inning. Aaron Loup walked the first 2 batters of the 7th inning and then watched them pull off a double steal, but limited the Astros to 1 run. Brett Cecil struck out the first batter he faced but then walked L.J. Hoes. After Matt Dominguez doubled. Brett got Dexter Fowler to tap a ball down the third base line. Cecil made a nice play gloving the ball and tossing it to Navarro to get the runner at the plate. The Astros challenged the play, thinking Dioner blocked the plate (and, looking at the video...they might have a point, I'll post the video). Then Cecil got a strikeout to end the play. The challenged play:

Sergio Santos struck out the side, in the 9th, to get his 3rd save and the first one that had no drama, we didn't have to chew off our finger nails this time.

On defense, Maicer Izturis started a pretty double play with a diving grab and glove hand flip:

Jay of the Day is Navarro (.233 WPA). Buehrle had a .185 WPA but I can't give him the JoD for that effort.

No Suckage Jays. Lawrie had the low mark at -.085.

One less than fun moment happened in 6th inning, Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion took 1 out walks. Then Bautista was picked off second base. I hate guys getting picked off second, but it was a perfect throw from pitcher Josh Zeid and tag from Jonathan Villar. Still...pay more attention Jose. Navarro followed that with a double, scoring Edwin.

Wednesday, we try to get above .500 again, Brandon Morrow gets the start, I'm hoping it will be better than his first start. Lucas Harrell. Last year Lucas was 6-17, with a 5.86 ERA, in 153 innings and led the AL with 88 walks. His first start of this year didn't go well, he went 3 innings, allowed 7 hits, 5 earned, 3 walks with 3 strikeouts. Maybe we can have our first blowout of the season?

The GameThread had 1406 comments. Hathorian led the way with 135 comments, proving that, even against the Astros you need to give 110%. Or something.