Homers from Pompey, Pillar and Bautista help the Jays beat the Orioles

Blue Jays 10 Orioles 7

Let's start by saying that that was the worst job I've ever seen from a home plate ump. I'd like to say it was equally bad for both teams, but he was so inconsistent it is impossible to guess which team got the worst of it. But, the strike 3 call to Russell Martin, in the 7th inning, was terrible. If baseball takes a good look at that game, that ump should be fired. It was so bad that, in the 8th, when O'Day threw behind Jose Bautista's back, I figured it would be called a strike.

Martin had a rough game, he got hit on the hands by a pitch in the 9th and the umps called it a swing when clearly it wasn't anywhere close to a swing.

Drew Hutchison had a terrible start. Velocity was down and he wasn't hitting his spots. He went 4.1 innings, allowing 7 hits, 7 earned, 1 walk, with 5 strikeouts. He was throwing a good slider, at times, which helped the strikeout numbers. Likely, the umpire's ever-changing strike zone helped him get a couple of strikeouts too.

His best inning was the 4th, which is likely why he was allowed to start the 5th inning. That was a mistake. A hard-hit single and a hit batter, set up a Travis Snider 3-run homer, turning a 4-run lead into a 1 run lead.

Fortunately we got a lot better work out of our bullpen:

• Aaron Loup pitched a perfect 1.2 innings with a strikeout.
• Roberto Osuna pitched his own perfect inning, on 11 pitches, with 2 strikeouts. Those of us in the GameThread figured Osuna should get another inning but they brought in...
• Brett Cecil, who had his own perfect inning with a strikeout.
• Miguel Castro took the 9th. He had his problems. A walk, a line drive right at Josh Donaldson and a single under Justin Smoak's glove. And then the most amazing catch you will ever see by Kevin Pillar. He had a great catch earlier in the game but the one in the 9th was better. Then Castro got Chris Davis to hit a much easier to catch fly to Pillar.

On offense, we had 3 home runs. A 2-run shot in the first by Dalton Pompey, who hit it out on a line. It had to be reviewed, just clearing the wall in right, hitting a rail and bouncing back into play. Kevin Pillar had a solo homer in the 2nd. And Jose Bautista had his first of the season, a couple of pitches after Darren O'Day threw one behind his back. Jose is best when angry.

We also scored 3 runs on a Snider misplay in right, he broke in on a ball over his head, then couldn't get back. He was giving an error....which, yes, he made a mistake, but you never seen that sort of play called an error.

We had 9 hits and 6 walks on the day. Jose Reyes had 3 of the hits. Every Jay had a hit or a walk, except for Devon Travis, who was the one robbed of a hit by the official scorer on the Snider error. He had a couple of hard-hit balls.

Defense, once again, helped us out. Pillar made 2 beautiful catches (the one in the 9th will likely be the catch of the year). Josh Donaldson made a great diving catch.

Jays of the Day are Loup (.121 WPA), Osuna (.101), Travis (.183, if you consider the error a hit, give the JoD to Devon, if you consider it an error, give the JoD to Snider, either way it is a Travis), Pompey (.141), Bautista (.138) and Reyes (.100). I'm also giving one to Pillar for his defense.

Suckage Award goes to Hutchison (-.425). I'm thinking he just had a 'dead arm' today. I hope things are better by his next start.

Source: FanGraphs

Tomorrow we have the Jays home opener. R.A. Dickey gets the start in the dome. If you are going, go very early, the new 'security' will cause long lineups.

I haven't been doing the comment leader board, mostly because I've been pretty busy, but let's put it up today. We had 1956 comments...and it was quite the battle for top spot, but Pikachu won out. A great job, considering he's an unevolved Pokemon (ok, I don't know, I have little pokemon knowledge).

If you don't see your name in the standings, you were under 10 comments, step up your game.