Santos Blows Another One, Jay Lose to Pirates

Blue Jays 5 Pirates 6

I don't know what to say about Sergio Santos. Two home runs to dead center field. He just needed three outs and he had 2 runs to play with.

That wasn't the best start of Brandon Morrow's life but he only gave up 1 walk, which, since he gave up 8 in 2.2 innings last time out, is a victory. Or could have been a victory if Santos wouldn't have blown the save. He gave up a lot of hits, 11, in 5 innings, but most of them were of the soft ground ball variety. It seemed to me that Reyes was playing further over towards third base, likely compensating for Lawrie not being there, and so much was going past him on his left. As we said in the GameThread, I like Brandon throwing strikes, last game he couldn't do that. The next step is quality strikes.

The good news is that Steve Delabar pitched a scoreless inning. Not an easy scoreless inning, giving up a single, double and hit batter to load the bases but he got out of it. And Brett Cecil pitched 2 scoreless inning, allowing just a single. 5 innings, 3 earned isn't good, but he's a whole lot better than last time out.

And we had some good offense against a tough starter. 10 hits, 5 runs. 2 hits for Jose Bautista (both doubles) in his return to Pittsburgh and Brett Lawrie (a single and legged out double). Colby Rasmus homered to the opposite field. Steve Tolleson had a pinch hit triple in his first at bat as a Blue Jay. All our 8 regulars in the lineup had at least one hit. And we seemed to be working the count.

Juan Francisco made a nice play at third base. Lawrie looked confident at second base. Jose Reyes and Edwin Encarnacion each stole a base.

Jays of the Day are Cecil (.135 WPA), Francisco (.114), Rasmus (.114) and Tolleson (.128).

Suckage: Santos (-.932, a season high for suckage). Morrow also had the number at -.144.

I don't know about the rest of you but I think I'm going to drink. Anyone want to go to the bar?

We had a nice GameThread (at least until the home runs in the 9th), 1265 comments. Kraemer_17 again lapped the rest of us.