After Zaun told us that Devon Travis can't hit lead off, it was nice to see Devon start the game with a home run. That was damn near the only good moment of the game.
We scored our second run in the second inning, 1-out singles from Russell Martin and Danny Valencia, and a walk from Kevin Pillar loaded the bases. Ryan Goins deep fly out to left brought in Russell.
The game went from fun to depressing soon after that.
First, Travis hurt his shoulder striking out in the 3rd inning and came out of the game.
Then, the game changed on a terrible call by the umpires. Leading off the 5th inning Ryan Howard fouled a ball off his leg and it rolled out to third. Unfortunately the plate umpire, apparently, didn't see it hit Howard. And, apparently, all 3 other umpires were sleeping at the time, because they all missed it too. Gibby came out to argue, but, looking at the rule, that play can't be challenged. It seems like something you should be able to challenged, but it isn't. Stupid MLB. Stupid umpires.
There is no way all four umpires should have missed that. No way. One of them should have seen it.
The call might have rattled Felix Doubront, who was pitching a good game to that point. But, after that, he gave up 3 straight doubles and was out of the game. We quickly went from up 2-0, to down 3-2. Thankfully, Ryan Tepara came in and got us out of the inning.
That call may have cost us the game. Never know what might have happened from there if the right call was made, but man it shouldn't have been hard to get the call right.
It went from bad to worse. In the 8th, Jose Bautista came out of the game with a sore leg, pulled muscle, cramp?
There were some other good moments. LaTroy Hawkins made his first appearance as a Blue Jay, and pitched a clean inning with a strikeout. Brett Cecil had a clean 7th. Liam Hendriks pitched a perfect 8th and 9th.
And we had some great defense, that play by Ryan Goins to tag out Darin Ruf, to end the 2nd inning, is one of those great plays that we get every time Goins makes a start. If he could just hit a bit, I'd love him. We are likely to see him playing second for a little bit with Travis out.
We really should have been able to score more runs. We only had 6 hits and 2 walks. One of the hits was Devon's home run. Edwin Encarnacion and Russell Martin had 2 hits each. Danny Valencia (playing left, then second, then left) had the other hit.
We got 0 fors from Carrera, Donaldson, Bautista, Colabello, Pillar and Goins.
The other interesting moment was Drew Hutchison pinch running for Edwin Encarnacion, after Edwin singled to lead off the 9th....I really don't understand the move.
We needed to score more....we should have scored more.
With the injuries and the short bench, we also had the fun of watching Martin play second base.
I'm hopeful that tomorrow we'll have word on the injuries to Travis and Bautista. Please don't let it be bad.
Update, some good news:
Tough loss tonight, on to the next one. For those of you who actually care it was just a cramp. I expect to be in there tomorrow. #GoJays
— Jose Bautista (@JoeyBats19) July 29, 2015
Jays of the Day: Tepera (.118) and Encarnacion (.094)
Suckage; Doubront (-.256), Colabello (-.189), Bautista (-.122) and Valencia (-.121).
We had 1184 comments in an understandably grumpy GameThread. Pikachu led us in a losing cause.
# | Commenter | # Comments |
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1 | Pikachu | 109 |
2 | Tom Dakers | 91 |
3 | lalalaprise | 83 |
4 | MjwW | 80 |
5 | Belisarius | 65 |
6 | Janz_V84 | 62 |
7 | MartsB | 51 |
8 | Mike Hannah | 49 |
9 | Diamond_D86 | 48 |
10 | DangYouToHeck | 39 |
11 | Spor | 35 |
12 | stressed | 34 |
13 | GatorJay | 31 |
14 | junior_felix_jr | 30 |
15 | Momus3 | 29 |
16 | fishedin | 27 |
17 | Kurupt | 23 |
18 | Gibbons' Finest | 22 |
19 | KevinInCT | 20 |
20 | SayWord13 | 17 |
21 | TorontoKen | 16 |
22 | TwitchyJB | 15 |
23 | PatBordersMVP | 12 |
24 | Cameroli | 12 |
25 | graham.obrien.56 | 11 |
26 | BWoS | 11 |
27 | erik.t | 11 |
28 | hoph | 11 |
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