Jays lose to Red Sox

Blue Jays 1 Red Sox 4

Let's start with the rant.

In the 7th inning, the Jays finally got a couple of base runners on against Rick Porcello. With two outs, the entire Blue Jays world expected Gibby to pinch hit for Josh Thole. It was the obvious move. The only person not to think this was the moment to pinch hit was Gibby. Thole stayed in the game and flied out. I don't know what the reasoning was, but, whatever it might have been, I don't like it.

Then, in the 8th, Ryan Goins was due to lead off and again, surely there would be a pinch hitter, but no. Course Goins goes and fools me by hitting a single. I still think the right move was to pinch hit there.

Then, in the 9th, Gibby has Russell Martin pinch hit for Michael Saunders, with 2 out.

Also worth ranting about was the strike zone that Jose Bautista had to deal with. It seemed that every time he came to bat, this whole series, he would get one absolutely awful call that would go a long way towards ruining his at bat. I don't know if the umpires were trying to punish him for past complaints about the zone, but if they were, they are idiots. Especially doing it in a series with the Red Sox, a team that complains about everything.

The other interesting moment of the game was in the bottom of the 7th, Red Sox had runners on second and third and Mookie Betts singled. The runner on third scored, but the runner coming from second was thrown out at the plate. Farrell asked for a review on the 'blocking the plate' rule. The review seemed to last forever. It might have been the longest review I've ever seen, but they came back holding up the out call. That blocking the plate rule is still tough to understand.

Anyway, another Dickey start where we didn't score. This was his 5th start and we have scored a total of 14 runs in those 5 starts and the game that we scored 6 runs, all the runs came after he left the game. Poor guy. He didn't pitch bad tonight 7 innings, 9 hits, 4 earned (could have been 5 if the Sox had won the review), 0 walks (yay) and 4 strikeouts. That he made it through without a walk is a good sign.

Jeff Francis pitched a clean 8th.

Once again, we weren't hitting. We had a single in the 2nd innings and didn't have another hit until the 7th. In total, 3 hits, 2 walks. Some of it can be blamed on the terrible strike zone, and Rick Porcello was very good, but it would be nice if we could score some runs for Dickey one day.

Jay of the Day? Well,  Michael Saunders had the number (.120 WPA) but most of that came because of a Porcello error .

Suckage goes to Dickey (-.160 WPA), Thole (-.120, hardly fair because he should have been pinch hit for in the at bat that gave him most of that) and Donaldson (-.092).

So the Jays head off to Cleveland for 4 games against the Native Americans.