Blue Jays win and will host Wild Card game Tuesday

Blue Jays 2 Red Sox 1

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m just a puddle of sweat right now.

Before anything else, I think we should give Aaron Sanchez a standing ovation. What an amazing start. 7 innings, just 1 hit (maybe a hit, maybe a long foul, we’ll never really know), 2 walks, 1 hit batters and 6 strikeouts. He was brilliant.

Brett Cecil got an out and gave up a soft single, to start the 8th. Joe Biagini came in a got a ground out and a strike out.

But, that wasn’t just a ground out. Let’s just say that that play by Josh Donaldson, in the 8th, on a Dustin Pedroia grounder down the line, was just amazing. I didn’t think he had a shot.

Roberto Osuna took the 9th. He got Mookie Betts to ground out to short (nice play Tulo), David Ortiz to tap one at the plate. Hanley Ramirez walked, just so I would sweat some more. Xander Bogaerts singled, and my heart started skipping beats. But Jackie Bradley hit into an easy ground out. All is well.

If we could just score more, my blood pressure would be so much better. My wife had dialed 9-1 before that last out....

Offensively.....we didn’t do much. We scored a fifth inning run on a solo homer from Devon Travis. Then, in the 8th, after the maybe home run tied the game, Donaldson singled and Edwin Encarnacion worked a walk, but Jose Bautista ground a soft one right to third base, for a 5-3 double play. But Russell Martin hit one even softer, and got a single, then Troy Tulowitzki hit the biggest single of our season.

We had 9 hits and 4 walks, so we should have scored more than 2 runs. Tulo, Martin and Travis had 2 hits each.

Jays of the Day: Sanchez (.253 WPA), Biagini (.199), Tulo (.141). And I’m giving one to Travis, even though he had a .075, because that was a huge homer. And I’m giving one to Josh for that great play on defense.

Suckage: Baustista, even with a single and a walk, had a -.115, much of that on the double play ball.

We had 1576 comments in the GameThread. TimmyMax led us to the big win. Great job.