The offense returns, Blue Jays win

Mets 0 Blue Jays 8

Nice to be on the winning end again. The offense, that took two days off in New York to see a couple of plays, came back to life (late in the game) and our pitchers (and defense) kept the Mets off the scoreboard.

Drew Hutchison was better than his last start, but not great. He was pretty lucky, he had some great defense behind him and most of the hard hit balls found gloves. Ryan Goins made a couple of very nice plays, just in the first inning and Kevin Pillar showed off all of his range in center. Drew went 5.2, allowed 4 hits, 1 walk with 5 strikeouts. He had to battle and he threw a lot of pitches, but he kept the Mets off the board.

Our bullpen was great, again. Steve Delabar, in particular, was terrific, pretty much like the Delabar of old. If he can continue to pitch like this, our pen looks so much better. He got 4 outs with 2 strikeouts. Liam Hendriks got 2 outs, giving up a single. He likely could have been left out there longer, but, with 2 outs and 1 on, and lefty Lucas Duda up, Gibby brought in Aaron Loup, who got Duda to fly out. Ryan Tepera pitched the ninth, helped out by 2 very nice plays by Gonis.

On offense, we got a single run in each of the second, sixth and seventh innings and then broke out for 5 in the eighth.

We had a couple of home runs, a solo shot for Kevin Pillar in the fifth and a 3-run shot for Valencia in the eighth.

We had 10 hits and 8 walks altogether. Pillar had 3 hits. That, and his defense almost makes up for his mistake yesterday. Goins had 2 hits. The only Jays not to hit were Reyes, Bautista (but it had 2 walks) and Encarnacion. Josh Donaldson was having a tough day, taking 3 strikeouts, but he also had a double and a walk.

We had some interesting base running tonight:

• In the second inning, after we scored our first run of the game, we had Valencia on third and Pillar on first, 2-out and Ryan Goins at the plate. The Jays figured this was time to steal run. Pillar takes off from first and stops before the bag at second and Valencia heads home. I'm afraid Valencia doesn't have the speed for that play, and he didn't get a good jump. He ended up trying to get into a run down, but was out easy. I really like that play but maybe not with Danny in the role of stealing home.
• And then, with 1 out in the 5th inning, with Pillar on first, Ryan Goins had a hard hit single to right, but, for some reason, he decided to stretch it into a double. It really wasn't close. And it was the wrong moment to try that. At the time we were only up by 1 and we could have had runners on the corners and 1 out, but instead we had a runner on third and 2 out. They say never make the first or third out at third, but then other one they should say is never make the second out at second, if there is a runner on third.

Jays of the Day: Hutchison (.313), Delabar (.123), Colabello (.123) and Pillar (.195, and good defense). I'm also giving one to Goins (.026) because of his defense.

Suckage: Martin had the number (-.101), but I think we should give him some credit for helping Drew fight through his 5.2. He also made a very nice catch on a popup in the first inning. Reyes had a bad number too (-.087) but he was robbed in his first 2 at bats of the game. Edwin had a bad day at the plate too, and had the number (-.091), so let's give him the award.

We had 896 comments in the thread. Pikachu led us to victory. Good job.