Great start from Estrada, plus 2 Donaldson and 1 Bautista homers equals Jays Win

Blue Jays 3 Astros 1

So the lack of offense in the games in Houston continues.

Our Jays did manage 7 hits, and 2 walks, to go along with 14 strikeouts. The good news is that 3 of the hits were home runs. Bad news is they were all solo shots.

Josh Donaldson hit one in the 4th inning. And Jose Bautista and Donaldson went back-to-back in the 6th.

The nice part is that the Astros are having at least us much trouble as the Jays in getting hits. The Astros only managed 5 hits (4 of the doubles), no walks and 8 strikeouts. They have only scored 4 runs in the first 3 games of this series.

Marco Estrada was brilliant, yet again. 7 innings, 4 hits, 1 earned, no walks and 7 strikeouts. We've had 3 starters go 7 innings, allowing just 1 run in each game of this series.

Joe Biagini had to fight through a scoreless 8th. He gave up a leadoff double (if Bautista could throw like he could in the past, it wouldn't have been a double) to Jake Marisnick. Then George Springer hit an easy ground ball to short, Darwin Barney saw that Marisnick was too far off second and tossed to Devon Travis but Travis went for the tag before getting the ball. A really bad error, allowing the tying run to reach base.

A bunt moved the runners to second and third with Jose Altuve coming up. At first Russell Martin called for an intentional walk (I hate intentional walks), but Gibby came out quick and talked them out of the walk. Altuve flied out to Bautista, not deep enough to score Marisnick. I think if he was the tying run, they would have tried to score Marisnick (and he would have, most likely, made it. It wasn't a great throw from Jose). Biagini then struck out Carlos Correa to get out of the inning without allowing a run.

That was a pretty amazing job by Biagini.

Roberto Osuna pitched a nice quick 9th for his 23rd save.

Jays of the Day: Estrada (.346 WPA), Donaldson (.174) and Bautista (.101). Honorary mention to Biagini for the great work in the 8th and Gibby for calling off the IW.

Suckage: I'm giving one to Travis for the -.068 WPA (on an 0 for 5 with 2 k) and the error that could have cost us big time.

Some of the offensive problems apparently comes from the new LCD lights at Minute Maid. Add in a lousy hitter's background and a batter's box that batters can get a grip on with their spikes and you get a recipe for crappy offense.

We had 1413 comments in the GameThreads. We seemed like a happy bunch tonight. DangYouToHeck led us to the victory. Great job.