Bad pitching, once again, sinks Blue Jays

Blue Jays 7 Indians 10

Stop me if you've heard this one: Crappy pitching costs the Jays a win.

Drew Hutchison was sorta kinda ok through 4 innings. And then it all fell apart in the 5th. His 5th went:

• Chisenhall double (fielded nicely by the ball boy down the right field line but he didn't make the throw to second when he had the play, instead he gave it to a fan).
• Brett Hays three pitch strikeout. Really at that point it looked like Hutchison was doing find.
• Michael Bourne walk. 8 pitch at bat, where Bourne fouled off a couple of good pitches. Still things looked ok.
• Hard hit single, by Jason Kipnis, right through a diving Josh Donaldson. It was hit to hard for Josh to judge the bounce.
• Jose Ramirez doubled, over Ezequiel Carrera, who made a good run and diving attempt at, just to have it go off the end of his glove. It would have been an amazing catch, and we could have used it, but really, he was lucky to get that close.

And that was it for Hutchison. Jeff Francis came in and gave up 2 hits and 2 walks before being replaced by Miguel Castro.. By then 6 runs had scored. Before this game, Francis had been doing a pretty good job for us, but today he was awful. Zaun makes the point that Francis shouldn't have been left in to face Ryan Raburn, with two outs in the inning and the game tied. He may have a point. Rayburn clubs lefties. Two batters later, Castro did come in and struck out Brett Hayes to end the inning.

But then Castro had his own troubles in the 6th inning, giving up 2 hits, 2 walks and 2 more runs.

Scott Copeland mopped up the last 2 innings.

We had our own 6 run inning in the 4th. 4 of the runs scored on a Devon Travis grand slam. Our batters had a good time against Indians' starter Trevor Bauer. Unfortunately, the 5 run lead we had after the 6 run 4th didn't stand up.

Russell Martin had a solo homer in the 9th, but too little too late.

Our offense was good, we had 10 hits and 4 walks. Martin, Michael Saunders and Carerra had two hits each. The only Jays not to hit were Josh Donaldson (who had 2 walks) and Kevin Pillar (who had a couple of hard hit balls caught).

It looked like it might be a tough luck day for the offense early, in the third inning we turned 3 walks into a scoreless inning, with the help of an ill advised sac bunt. After starting off the inning with 2 walks, and with a 2-0 count, Gibby had Carrera bunt, which he did successfully, but, we shouldn't have given up the out. Though I can understand Gibby not having much faith in Carrera.

Carlos Santana tried to hand us the game. In the second inning, with 2 on and 1 out, he inexplicably got caught off second base on a pop up, infield fly rule, to Hutchison, who threw behind him at second for the force out. Then, in our half of the 4th, with runners on first and third, Ryan Goins hit a easy ground ball to Santana at first, and, instead of trying for a rather easy 3-6-3 double play to end the inning, or stepping on first and taking an easy out, Santana spotted Pillar off third base, ran at him.....and then instead of throwing to the third baseman for an easy tag, he dived at Pillar, as Pillar dived back to first, coming up too late for the out. Just stupid baseball.

Jays of the Day: Saunders (.212) and Carrera (.104) get the number. I'm also giving one to Travis, even though he has a .030, because I think a grand slam should always get you a JoD.

Suckage: Francis (-.436), Hutchison (-.294) and Bautista (-.121, for a 1 for 5 with a double day).

I really don't know what the answer to the pitching problems might be. It isn't like it's 1 or 2 guys that are pitching badly, it's all the starters and many of the relievers.

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