More on last night's win

This seems to be a continuing feature....There is a problem with trying to get the recap up quickly, you don't get everything in it that was interesting about the game.

Statcast took a look at Kevin Pillar's catch from last night. His top speed 17.8 MPH (28.7 KMH), distance traveled 85.5 feet (26.1 metres) and 96.2% route efficiency.

Just another terrific catch from Kevin. It is getting boring. Everyday the same thing, an amazing catch.

A less fun moment of last night's game, in the 5th inning, Jose Bautista had hit a one out double and Edwin Encarnacion followed with a hard hit single straight at Brandon Moss in right. It wasn't a deep single, and Moss is a right fielder with a pretty good arm. Rivera sent Jose home and he was out by something like 20 feet. He was out by so much that there was no reason for him to slide, he just kind of walked into the tag, good move on his part.

I believe a good third base coach will get the odd guy thrown out at the plate. Sometimes the outfielder will get off a good throw, when he's usually a bit wild. Sometimes there are two out and you think that a 50/50 chance to score now is better odds than your next batter getting a hit. Sometimes it is a tied game and you really want that run. Sometimes you just want to put pressure on the defense.

In this case....We were up by 5. Moss has a good arm (Athletics Nation has a post talking about his arm and showing a video of him making 3 nice throws from the outfield, go take a look) . The base runner, Jose Bautista is banged up already. We would have 2 chances to score Bautista from 3rd base. And, the difference between being up 5-0 and being up 6-0 is so slim that it isn't worth sending unless you are absolutely sure he will score.  Since he was out by about 20 feet, I'm hoping that Rivera wasn't sure that he would score. Danny Valencia followed with a deep fly, which would have scored Jose, though with a runner on third, the pitcher would have likely thrown a different pitch, and the outcome would, likely, have been different. So we need parallel universes to see what would have happened. I figure in most parallel universes, Rivera has already been fired.

If a player is already hurt, I wish Rivera would err on the side of caution. In this case, Bautista was smart, he saw he was going to be out, so he didn't slide or try to do anything that might add to his injury troubles, but plays are home are often where injuries happen.

I haven't noticed as many outs at the plate, so far this year, so I'm willing to give Rivera the benefit of the doubt, but I'd like him to be smarter in the future.

Speaking of smarter....Devon Travis took the hard hit ball in the chest or shoulder last night and then, his next time at bat, he looked to be in pain. This seems to be a continuing theme, but, when a player looks like he is hurting, Gibby please, TAKE HIM OUT OF THE GAME. Once again, we were up by 5 runs. We have a very good defensive second baseman on the bench and Travis has been banged up enough already this season. TAKE HIM OUT OF THE GAME.

There seems to be this reluctance to use the bench, which bugs me. Those guys are there to play. If you are scared to put them into games, get different guys. If you are worried that if Goins goes in, someone else will be hurt and you'll be short players, get some more versatile players for your bench. But, in a game where you have over a 90% chance of winning and a player looks even just slightly hurt, take him out.

I don't see the upside in keeping a hurting player in the game. I get that players want to stay in the game. We've seen that a fair bit already this year, but that's why we don't let the players decide these things.

And, in Bisons' news, Chris Colabello was named International League Player-of-the-Month. He hit .338 with league leading 5 home runs and16 RBI. He has a .338/.427/.592 batting line.