Great start for David Price, Jays beat Twins

Twins 1 Blue Jays 5

The title is really one of those cases of burying the lede. The real news of the game is that Ryan Goins hit a home run. When Alex got David Price and Troy Tulowitzki, that a surprise. Goins hitting a home run is a real shocker. Sorry, Ryan, just teasing. Still love you. Goins had a great day with the bat, going 2 for 4 (home run and single).

But, of course, it was David Price Day.

All he did was pitch 8 innings, allow just 3 hits (homer and 2 doubles), 1 earned (a solo homer for Torii Hunter), 2 walks and 11 strikeouts. He threw 118 pitchers (I thought Gibby could have taken him out after 7 and save some of those bullets for his next start against the Yankees, but it doesn't matter).

He did have a bit of trouble in the 4th inning. Trevor Plouffe led off with a double, Minguel Sano and Hunter walked to load the bases, but Price got out of it. Troy Tulowhitzki made a nice catch on a Eddie Rosario pop up, going a long way out to center field to make the catch. Then Price struck out Aaron Hicks and Kurt Suzuki to end the threat. After the walk to Hunter, Price wouldn't allow another baserunner, 15 straight outs.

David said that today's crowd was the best atmosphere he's ever pitched in.

LaTroy Hawkins pitched a quick 9th to finish the game out. He did make a nice catch on a grounder hit right back to him.

We didn't score a lot of runs, but, easily enough for to get Price the win. We scored:

• 1 in the 2nd: Goins solo homer.
• 2 in the 5th: Troy Tulowitzki singles and Josh Donaldson crushed an opposite field home run.
• 2 in the 7th: Tulowitzki walked. Two outs later, Edwin Encarnacion singled him home and Jason Smoak singled home Edwin.

We had 8 hits and 4 walks on the day. Two hits each for Goins and Donaldson. We had 0 fors from Jose Bautista, Russell Martin and Ben Revere. Revere is now 0 for 10 as a Blue Jay. Hopefully he'll get on the board tomorrow.

Jays of the Day: Price (.325 WPA), Donaldson (.194) and Goins (.106).

No Suckage Jays, Bautista had the low mark at -.089.

Here is the FanGraph for Price's first game as a Blue Jay. You might want to frame it.

Source: FanGraphs

I got a laugh from Buck saying that Price might join Dave Stieb as the best pitchers in Jays history, forgetting about  Roy Halladay. Who could forget Doc?

We had 1653 comments, in a very excited GameThread.  JaysWillRise led us to victory. Great job.