Jose Bautista hits 2 home runs, Jays beat Rays

Rays 8 Blue Jays 10

And we expected a pitchers duel.

That's the worst start we've seen from David Price, in his short Blue Jays career. He only made it through 5 innings (and in the middle of the 3rd, I would have said it was a long shot he would get that far), he allowed, 6 hits, 5 runs, 4 earned, 1 walk with 6 strikeouts. To be fair, the ball was really carrying today. Everything hit into the air seemed to fly much much further than you'd expect.

And he was hurt by some bad defense. In the Rays 4-run 3rd inning, with runners on first and second, Steven Souza hit a line drive over Jose Bautista (that ball carried a lot further than I thought it would, though I still think Jose should have caught it). Jose got the ball back in quick and the runner from first stopped at second, but Souza figured it was a double all the way (it was). So Cecil Pennington threw behind him, trying to get the out at first. Unfortunately, Smoak was over in the middle of the diamond to be a cutoff man.

The ball went to the fence, where, of course, a fan picked it up. Why is it that the only people dumb enough to interfere with a ball in play away are the ones that sit in row 1?

After Price came out, things went well, pitching wise, until the top of the 9th.

Up by 5, Ryan Tepera started the inning and walked the leadoff hitter and then Richis Shaffer hit a ground ball to Justin Smoak at first. I would have liked him to take the out at first, but he threw to second, low and both runners were safe. Error 1 of the inning.

With James Loney, a lefty up next, Gibby brought in Brett Cecil, he got Looney to ground out and then got another ground ball, but Darwin Barney booted it. Error two of the inning.

With a RH pinch hitter, Gibby pulled Cecil for Roberto Osuna. I wouldn't have, but then, I don't think it was a terrible choice either. Osuna gave up a single, and then a hard line out to center and a ground ball to third, which Josh Donaldson almost threw away. If Barney hadn't made a nice catch it would have been error 3 of the inning.

We used a bunch of relievers today. As well as the 3 used in the 9th, we used 4 others. LaTroy Hawkins pitched a nice 6th. Aaron Loup and Liam Hendriks shared a perfect 7th. Aaron Sanchez looked very good pitching a quick 8th, with a strikeout and 2 easy ground outs.

On offense, Bautista hit his 38th and 39th home run, driving in 4. Russell Martin hit home run 22 of his season. Ben Revere and Kevin Pillar had 3 hits each (and Pillar stole his 25th base). Bautista and Smoak had 2 hits each (Smoak came a couple of feet short of a home run). We had 10 hits and 5 walks, in 3.2 innings, off Chris Archer.

We scored 5 runs in the first, Bautista's first homer, a 3-run shot, and Martin's homer, scoring 2 more. And we got 2 runs in each of the 3rd and 4th innings, plus Bautista's 2nd home in the 8th. It should have been a rout.

Jays of the Day: Bautista (.195 WPA), Pillar (.161), Martin (.113) and Revere (.116).

Price has the suckage number. at -.161, but some of that was the bad defense, plus I'd like David to stay, so I can't say anything bad about him, so we'll not give him the award.

There is a little celebrating going on:

David Price gets ambushed #BlueJays pic.twitter.com/YIutSnvAtA

— Arden Zwelling (@ArdenZwelling) September 26, 2015

Someone spend 20 minutes explaining to them that they haven't made the playoffs yet.

The Magic Number to clinch the division is now 5. Go White Sox Go.

We had 1552 comments in our, rather run, GameThreads. I'm taking credit for the victory, leading us to the glorious win.