Great night for Devon Travis, Jays beat Rays

Rays 4 Blue Jays 7

That was a little more like it.

We scored 4 runs early, and, of course, the Rays caught up and it looked like it was going to be another one of those nights where we just couldn’t score enough.

Then came the 7th inning.

Rays reliever Xavier Cedeno walked Michael Saunders and Troy Tulowitzki to start of the inning. I was sad when the Rays replaced Xavier with Dylan Floro, but Floro walked pitch hitter Russell Martin.

That’s where the walks ended.

Melvin Upton struck out. That was a rather crappy at bat.

Justin Smoak came in to pitch hit and did watch 2 balls. Then he pounded a low pitch into the ground, right at the pitcher. We were lucky that it went off the pitchers glove or it would have been an easy double play ball, but the Rays just got the out at the plate. Michael Saunders caught catcher Bobby Wilson’s leg, sliding home. I worried that, somehow, they would decide that Saunders had done wrong and given the Rays the double play, but, happy to say, I was wrong.

Thankfully, Devon Travis lined a hard single to center, giving us the lead again. And Jose Bautista ripped a double into the gap, scoring 2. Thank you Devon and Jose, we were starting to get grumpy.

We scored 4 earlier in the game. In the first Devon Travis started us off with a triple and Bautista drove him home with a sac fly. An out later, Edwin Encarnacion hit his 31st home run (and roughly our thousandth consecutive solo homer).

Then, in the fourth inning, Josh Thole was hit by pitch, and Travis singled. A couple of quick outs later, Edwin drove them home with a hard hit ground single.

We had a 2-0 lead and then a 4-2 lead but neither lasted long.

R.A. Dickey seemed to be having some bad BABIP luck. He gave up 6 hits, 3 walks, a hit batter, with 3 strikeouts, to give up 4 runs before Gibby pulled him after 4.1 innings.

Joe Biagini came in with the go ahead run on second and gave up a hard hit ground ball, but right at Travis for an out, and a hard hit line drive, but right to center fielder Melvin Upton. Sometimes we do get lucky.

Biagini would pitch a scoreless 6th.

Joaquin Benoit started the 7th off by walking Logan Forsythe and giving up a double to Kevin Kiermaier. It looked like Benoit was going to have that blow out inning we’ve worried about. But a strikeout, a fly out to Jose Bautista (why Forsythe didn’t try to score I’ll never know) and another fly out to center. I’m not sure if Benoit was good or lucky, but I’ll take it.

Jason Grilli did his thing in the 8th.

Roberto Osuna allowed a home run, but got 2 strikeouts and picked up his 25th save.

We had 12 hits on the day. Travis was the star with a 4 for 5 day. Edwin was 3 for 5 with the home run and 3 RBI. Bautista was 2 for 4, with 3 RBI.

Travis had an amazing defensive play in the 6th inning. You can see it here (but you need to watch a Ford ad). After a Steven Souza lead off double, Tim Beckham hit a hard grounder to Devon’s left. Devon got the ball, glanced at third and then threw there for the out. A terrific play. That was followed by a nice double play, started by Donaldson.

Jays of the Day: Travis (.339 WPA), Bautista (.110), Edwin (.210) and Biagini (.167).

Suckage: Dickey (-.307, some of it bad luck), Smoak (-.120) and Upton (.107). Ceciliani came close with a -.081 for an 0 for 3 with a k). Donaldson didn’t have a good day either, 1 for 5 with 2 strikeouts and a -.066 WPA, but he had a good day with the glove, starting 2 nice double plays.

We had 1410 comments in the GameThreads. TimmyMax led us to victory. Great job.