Blue Jays give us yet another terrible, soul-crushing loss

Blue Jays 5 Twins 6

Man, that was awful.

Amazingly we had a shot in the 9th. Jose Reyes singles to start the inning. Josh Donaldson follows with a deep fly to center, just not deep enough. In likely the last nice thing I'll say about Reyes in this post, Jose read it perfect and tagged up to second. Great smart play. Jose Bautista hit another deep fly out. Reyes moved up another base. Then Edwin Encarnacion pops up. And I'm sure my neighbors heard me swear.

The game was awful in so many ways. Long, boring, bad baseball, bad pitching, bad hitting, bad baserunning, bad defense. Actually bad defense is an understatement. Horrible, should never be seen in the MLB, defense.

Drew Hutchison was ok, for 5 innings, he was battling without his best stuff, but he was fighting through it. Then came the 6th inning. A double, single and home run and we go from up 4-1 to tied in 5 minutes (and, 5 minutes in this game was like 30 seconds in any other game, boy this was one long game).

Donaldson got us back the lead in the 7th, nice home run to center. Unfortunately....just before the home run, Jose Reyes hit a single to center. Normally, this would be a good thing, but he tried to stretch it to a double and was thrown out. Just barely, there was a review. And the outfielder did a great job, throwing the ball from the seat of his pants. But it was stupid to go for that base with Donaldson, Bautista and Encarnacion behind you. Stupid. Utterly stupid.

Now, everyone was saying that Reyes cost us a run, but, of course, none of us know if Donaldson would have got the same pitch with Reyes on second (or even the same pitcher), but you can't get thrown out like that in a tie game.

We get the lead and then we gave the Twins 2 runs in the bottom the inning. Get it, give it back. It started with a Jose Reyes throwing error. Just a bad throw, he seemed to stop short on his throwing motion, so that the ball didn't reach the target, bounced in front of Edwin. An out and a single later, Torii Hunter hits a fly ball to left. Hard hit ball, but not a tough catch. Chris Colabello should have caught it. For some reason, it looked like he pulled his arm down just before he would have caught it. Hard to blame Colabello, he isn't an outfielder, but still. Course, two runs scored and we are behind again.

It might be worth noting that, before the end of the inning, there was another ground ball to short and Reyes again bounced the throw to Edwin, this one Edwin was able to pick.

We got a base runner on in the 8th, Justin Smoak had an infield single, but Munenori Kawasaki, pinch running, was caught stealing. It was close, there was a review, but he was out.  I guess it was to be a hit and run, but Ryan Goins swung through the pitch. Don't hit and run with Goins at the plate.

Jays of the Day: Donaldson (.122 WPA) and Martin (.113, 2 for 3 and a walk). Reyes also had the number (.225), he was 3 for 5, he did drive in 2 (yeah, there was a lot of luck there, bloop single that fell in).

Suckage: Osuna had the number (-384, but that was on the Reyes error and the Colabello missed catch). So give it to Hutchinson (-.185), Edwin (-.225), Pillar (-.128) and Kawasaki (-.103 all on the caught stealing). Reyes and Colabello deserve special Suckage awards (not fair to pick on Chris, he really shouldn't be in the outfield, we just don't have any one else).

There are at least 100 things to talk about in that game but, right now, I hate baseball.

I mean, right now, I understand the JaysTalk callers....fire them all. No no, shoot them all, let God decide. They are all witches. Firing is too good for them. Burn them at the stake.

We had 1193 comments from 43 frustraited people in the GameThread. Momus led the way, good job.