Quick Recap: Jays lose to Pirates

Pirates 1 Blue Jays 0

The good part about that game was watching Aaron Sanchez. He had a very nice 3 innings of work, allowing no hits, a walk and getting three strikeouts. Glad to see him looking so good out there. He threw some very impressive curves.

I guess the other thing I liked about the game was how good Maicer Izturis looked on defense. He showed good range, and I was worried about his range after the leg injury from last year, but I'm far less worried now.

And it was good to see Jose Bautista back in the lineup, after missing a couple of games with tight hamstring. I think it was fair of us to worry that the Jays were downplaying his injury, considering our recent history. He struck out, on a full count pitch that was pretty borderline, but was too close to take and he took a walk.

I guess we can safely say the pitchers are ahead of the hitters. The only pitcher to give up a run was Scott Barnes, who allowed a couple of doubles in his inning, but also had a couple of strikeouts. The others:

• Todd Redmond hit a batter, but, after that, had a clean inning.
• Chad Jenkins didn't look sharp, but allowed just a single and had a strikeout.
• Colt Hynes had a clean inning with a strikeouts.
• Andrew Albers gave up 3 singles, while getting just 2 outs.
• Bo Schultz took over and got out of the 8th and pitched a clean 9th, getting a strikeout.

On offense we had only 3 singles. One each for Josh Donaldson, Ramon Santiago and Dwight Smith. And we took 3 walks (Donaldson, Bauitsta and Encarnacion). Most of the others showed they need to get their timing down. There were many bad swings. It would be nice to see some good contact on some pitches. Jose Reyes was 0 for 3, Justin Smoak, Dioner Navarro, Kevin Pillar and Izturis all were 0 for 2.

Navarro made the game's lone error, throwing the ball well wide of second on a stolen base. Reyes made a nice catch on a popup behind third, Reyes had moved to cover second because the runner on first was moving, then had to run a long way back towards shallow left to make the catch. Apparently, Donaldson didn't pick up the ball off the bat and didn't move on it.

Jays are now 3-3 on the spring. Tomorrow they have their first split squad games of the season, with half the team traveling to Lakeland to play the Tigers and the other half staying in Dunedin to face the Astros. The game against the Astros is on MLB Audio, Sportsnet, of course, is bringing us the Yankees/Rays game. Thanks a lot Sportsnet.