All good things come to an end, Jays lose in extras

Blue Jays 3 Mets 4

Brett Cecil had a shot at his third save of the week. He gave up a 1-out walk, to Ruben Tejada, but got a double play ball, unfortunately hit at Danny Valencia (who pinch hit for Goins in the 8th and, since we have an 8 man bullpen, had to play second base), Valencia should have thrown to Reyes at second, but instead he decides to tag the runner. Tejada, smartly stops half way....so Valencia has to run to him and, by then, no double play. Then Cecil throws a good pitch to Lucas Duda, who fights it off, slices it to left, but the team has shifted to the right. By the time Carerra gets to the ball, the runner is almost at third. Ezequiel makes the throw to Donaldson, in good time to get the runner at the plate, but Donaldson drops it on the transfer. Tying run scores. Lots of bad luck for Cecil.

Then Gibby brings Liam Hendriks in to face Wilmer Flores....I don't know about the move, I'd save with my closer, but Cecil had thrown 20 pitches. Hendriks gets Flores to hit a soft ground ball, but it goes right up the middle, and rolls into center. Pillar tried to get the out at the plate, but it was hit too slow, he didn't have a chance.

We've been waiting for Jose Bautista to go on one of those stretches where he carries the team for a couple of weeks. He's been good this year but he hasn't had that stretch where he gets half a dozen homers in a couple of weeks.  Tonight he got us a home run in the first, to give us a lead, and a home run in the ninth, to tie it. He tried to carry us.

Jose got us to extra innings and then we almost won it in the 11th. Ezequiel Carrera worked a 1-out walk. Chris Colabello sent him to third with a single to right (full count, Ezequiel was running on the pitch, and the first baseman almost caught it, which would have ended the inning). And Dioner Navarro went to 2 strikes before hitting a fly to right, deep enough to score Carrera.

Noah Syndergaard looked great, in his 6 innings of work. Noah allowed just 2 hits, 1 of them the Bautista homer, 2 walks and struck out 11. Yeah, the Mets won the trade.

Mark Buehrle was also terrific. He gave us 7 excellent innings. Unfortunately his defense let him down. In the sixth inning, Jose Reyes made a bad throw on a ground ball to short. Syndergaard followed with a nice bunt. And then Juan Lagares hit a double to left to tie the game. Then Ruben Tejada single to right, on a ball which Bautista tried to decoy that he was going to catch, but while he decoyed, he let the ball past him for a double. Odds are the runner would have scored from second anyway, but it turned a single into a double. Buehrle got out of the inning after that, but we went from up 1-0 to down 2-1.

Bautista did his hero act in the 9th, tying the game again. We had a chance to take the lead after. Edwin hit a pop down the right field line and hustled to second, great job of base running. Gibby took him out for Ezequiel Carerra, to pinch run. That's likely a debatable move in a game when we are short on the bench and might be playing extras. After Chris Colabello popped out, Dioner Navarro worked a walk, giving us runners on first and second with 1 out. But Kevin Pillar chased ball 4 twice, grounding into a force out and Danny Valencia struck out. And we were off to extras.

Our middle relievers did an excellent job, we had perfect innings out of Steve Delabar, Roberto Osuna and Aaron Loup.

Jays of the Day: Bautista (.429 WPA), Encarnacion (.157), Loup (.114) and Osuna (.114).

Suckage: Cecil (-.434, but not really his fault), Hendriks (-.404, again not really his fault), Reyes (-.150, plus the bad error), Donaldson (-.126, plus dropping the ball on the game tying run), Pillar (-.141) and Valencia (-.173).

I'd also give a suckage to the plate umpire. Marty Foster started the game behind the plate and seemed good, but took a hard foul and had to lead the game. Mike Winters took his place, and was terrible. Also, because of the lack of an umpire (with Foster out they were down to a 3-man umpiring team), Cecil got ripped off on a check swing, which, if they had someone in the right spot to appeal too, would, most likely, had been called a strike.

Let's start a new streak tomorrow.

We had 1994 comments in the GameThreads. Pikachu led the way. Good job sir.