Blue Jays waste a great start from J.A. Happ, lose to Orioles

Orioles 2 Blue Jays 1

The good news is that for the second day in a row we had a great start from our starting pitcher. J.A. Happ wasn't quite as good as Drew Hutchison was yesterday, but he was very good. 8 innings, 5 hits, 1 walks and, a career high 12 strikeouts. Unfortunately, one of the 5 hits was a Caleb Joseph 2-run homer and that was all the O's needed.

Also unfortunately, our offense didn't do much. We managed just 4 hits and 1 run (on Anthony Gose' first home run of the season). The offense was pretty anemic. Jose Reyes, Dioner Navarro, Colby Rasmus and Gose had a hit each.

We did have a couple of chances.

• In the third we had 2 2-out walks, from Reyes and Nolan Reimold, but Jose Bautista hit a fly out to right.
• In the 4th, Navarro led off with a single. An out later Danny Valencia ground into a force, and he would have scored on a hard hit ball by Rasmus, but it took a big bounce on the wonderful turf at Roger and went for a ground rule double, costing us a needed run.

The worst news from the game was that Melky Cabrera was hit on the elbow by a Miguel Gonzalez pitch and had to come out of the game. The Jays say the x-rays were negative, and he'll be out day-to-day, but we've heard that story before. I'm hoping he'll only be out a couple of days, but it looked very painful.

Jays of the Day are Happ (187 WPA)  and Gose (.088).

Suckage goes to, pretty much,the whole batting order, other than Gose. Francisco (-.189, 0 for 4, 1 k), Valencia (-.143, 0 for 4), Ryan Goins (-.138, 0 for 3, 1 k), Bautista (-.118, 0 for 3, walk, k).

Orioles starter Miguel Gonzalez was pretty good too. Both teams' pitchers were helped out by a very large strike zone from plate umpire D.J. Reyburn, who rarely saw an pitch off the outside corner that he didn't like.

We really could have used that win, but it isn't time to give up. We have 46 games left  We are in a 3-way tie with the Yankees and Royals for the second Wild Card spot. And a hot streak could catch us up to the Orioles who we now trail by 5 games.

After the game, Rob Rasmussen was sent back to Buffalo, to make room for Steve Tolleson to come back off the Paternity List. Congratulation Steve, you'll never have a good night's sleep (at least at your own home) again.

We had another nice GameThread, 1051 comments. Strik3r led the way. Great job.