Great start for J.A. Happ, Jays beat White Sox

White Sox 0 Blue Jays 7

So who had Happ throwing 124 pitches tonight? A great start for Happ, I thought Gibby left him in too long, up by 6 there is no reason to push him that far. But still a great start. In all, 7.2 innings, 4 hits, 2 walks, no runs with 8 strikeouts. That's the Happ we'd like to see for the rest of the season, though, after that many pitches, I wouldn't bet on him to be great next time out.

And our offense was pretty good too. 12 hits, 4 walks.  We scored:

• 2 in the first: singles from Jose Reyes and Melky Cabrera, followed by a double from Adam Lind drove Reyes in. Our old friend Moises Sierra helped out when he decided to make his throw to somewhere roughly half way between third base and home plate, allowing Melky to score.
• 1 in the second: Juan Francisco walked (!!!) and Jose Reyes hit one that bounced off the top of the right field wall, but it bounced back to the field. After the review, it was a triple.
• 2 in the fourth: with 2 outs, Anthony Gose and Reyes each singled, Melky walked and Lind hit a 2-run double.
• 1 in the 7th: Melky led off with a walk and Edwin Encarnacion doubled him home.
• 1 in the 8th: Munenori Kawasaki singled, Gose walked, Reyes singled, to load the bases, and Kawasaki scored on Melky's ground out.

There was some controversy, leading off the 5th inning, Dioner Navarro hit a fly to deep left that Dayan Viciedo caught then dropped. Poor Navarro had to get running. He made it to second base, but center fielder Leury Garcia threw well wide of second. Navarro gets 'running' again, slows up at third but Luis Rivera, for reasons only he knows, decided to wave him home. He was out by roughly 20 feet. Just a terrible send. With no one out there was no reason to take a chance. Just stupid baseball. Fortunately, we didn't need the run. I really think it is time to give Rivera a different job with the team.

And, in the 8th, Steve Tolleson appeared to beat out a throw to first, but was called out. Replays seemed to show that he was safe, but the nice drunk Yankee fans in New York didn't see it the same way. I'm don't know what they saw that was so different than what we saw, but, we won, so I won't get too upset.

Jays of the Day are Happ (.261 WPA), Lind (.230), and Reyes (.129).

Rivera gets the Suckage Award, even if it was a low leverage spot.

Source: FanGraphs

We had another very nice GameThread, 1547 comments. Hathorian lead us to victory with a gritty performance.