Despite homers from Navarro and Encarnacion, Jays lose to Rays

Blue Jays 3 Rays 4

So, Chris Archer is pretty good. Not exactly news is it. He had a perfect game going into the fifth inning.  Dioner Navarro ended his perfect game and shutout with one swing, his second home run in 2 days. Archer went 8 innings, allowed just 3 hits, 1 walk and had 7 strikeouts.

We got a run off Rays closer Brad Boxberger in the 9th. Edwin Encarnacion took him deep. That would have been a big home run, but Steve Delabar gave up a home run, to Asdrubal Cabrera, in the bottom of the 8th. That one changed a 3-2 game to a 4-2 game. Without that, Edwin's homer would have tied the game (depending, of course, on space/time continuum stuff).

R.A. Dickey wasn't terrible, he allowed 8 hits, 3 earned, 3 walks with 2 strikeouts. A couple of the runs, against him, scored with the help of some defensive mistakes. In the 5th, Rays CF Kevin Kiemaier had a 1-out single and moved to second on a Russell Martin passed ball. Passed balls happen with knuckleball pitchers, but, of course, this one was followed by a Joey Butler single that scored Kiermaier.

Evan Longoria followed with a walk, moving Butler to second. And then Logan Forsythe hit a deep fly ball that sent Kevin Pillar running a long way back to make a nice catch, but then he dropped the ball on the transfer to his throwing hand. He had time to relax, he didn't need to rush the play, Butler was going to make it to third anyway. But, with the drop, Butler kept going for home. Kevin got it in to Ryan Goins fairly quickly, but then Goins dropped the ball too (off camera, they never did show what happened). I'm not sure if Goins would have had a play at the plate, but, dropping it again didn't help.

Pillar made 4 terrific catches, so he more than made up for that mistake.

The sad part was that we had just tied the score, in the top of the inning, and then gave the Rays back the lead in the bottom of the inning.

In the 7th, we scored our other run off Archer. Jose Bautista led off the inning with a walk and, an out later, Dioner Navarro singled, giving us runners on first and second. At the time I was thinking "should be be pinch running for Navarro?". Well, as it turned out, we should have. With 2-outs, Ezequiel Carrera hit a soft ground ball to third that Evan Longoria threw past first on. Bautista scored easy. I thought Navarro was going to score. It took a long time for the Rays to get to the ball, but Navarro was stopped at third. He would have been out. A player with any speed would have scored.

Of course, since we only had 4 hits on the day and Navarro had 2 of them, including the home run in the 5th, picking on him seems unfair.

Jays of the Day: Navarro (.193 WPA) and Carrera (.110). I think Pillar deserves an honorary mention for the several great catches me made.

Suckage: Dickey (-.141, hardly fair really), Reyes (-.130, and he also had a bad moment when he didn't get to second base quick enough on a stolen base to catch the throw from Russell Martin and tag out the runner. It looked like the throw was there in time.), Martin (-.156, plus a couple of passed balls) and Josh Donaldson (-.095). I think we ought to give one to Delabar too, even though he didn't have the number (-.058). We really needed him to keep it a 1-run game.

We had 918 comments in the GameThread. DangYouToHeck led the way, just pulling out the win, in a very close race. Good job.