David Price gets his 99th career win on his 30th birthday, Jays beat Rangers

Blue Jays 12 Rangers 4

I have no idea where to start talking about tonight's game. We got good pitching, great hitting and some amazing defensive plays. All parts of the game were great tonight. When they play like this, I start thinking we'll never lose again.

David Price was very good. He gave up a 2-run homer, to Adrian Beltre, in the first inning (we were actually behind for a few minutes), but after that he was very good. He gave up a single and a walk, to start the 4th inning, but then he struck out the side. That was the only other time the Rangers got a runner to second base.

In total, Price went 6 innings, allowed 5 hits, 2 earned, 1 walk with 8 strikeouts. Gibby took him out, after 6 innings and 95 pitches, because we had a big lead. No reason to tire the guy out.

Happy birthday David.

Mark (or maybe it is Derek, poor Buck) Lowe had an unlucky 7th inning. After a lead off single, Chris Gimenez tapped one along the third base line, about 15 feet from Russell Martin. Martin likely should have left it, to see if it would go foul, but he got there quick, made a nice throw to first, just a very tiny bit late to get the runner. I'm not sure if the ball would have gone foul, but Martin really didn't have a shot at first. Kevin Pillar helped Lowe out, making an excellent catch on a soft line drive hit to shallow center. I didn't think Pillar had a chance at it. Another soft grounder had Josh Donaldson make a nice play on to field but his throw was a little off line, for a single to load the bases. Then a Shin-Soo single to left scored 2. But Troy Tulowitzki and  Ryan Goins turned a great double play to end the inning.

Bo Schultz pitched the 8th and 9th.

On offense, we were great again. We had 3 home runs: a 2-run shot from Justin Smoak, a solo shot from Pillar and Edwin Encarnacion hit a grand slam to get his hitting streak to 21 games. And we took 11 walks. Jose Bautista had 4, Ryan Goins 3, Russell Martin 2 and 1 each from Tulowitzki and Donaldson. Add in 7 non-home hits and we had base runners on all game.

Pillar had a nice game, 3 hits and the great catch in the 7th. Nice to see him hitting again. Hopefully he can keep this going for the rest of the season.

Every Jay in the starting lineup got on base at least once.

And we had some amazing defense. This catch by Ben Revere might have been the most spectacular catch:

But Donaldson, Tulowitzki and Pillar had some nice plays too. And Smoak saved a couple of errors with great stretches at first base. It was a fun game to watch, whether the Jays were on offense or defense.

Jays of the Day: Bautista (.195 WPA), Pillar (.153) and Smoak (.147). Amazingly, Encarnacion had a -.045, even with the grand slam, but I'm going to give him and Ryan Goins an honorable mention. And Revere gets an honorable mention for that catch. The game was tied at that moment. And it stayed tied because of that catch.

We are in first place, 2 games in front of the Yankees.

We had 2113 comments in the GameThreads (actually 2114, but one was deleted, but it was a wonderfully done troll job, you have to admired the work involved, I suppose). Pikachu led us to victory. Good job sir.