Blue Jays lose in extras

Blue Jays 3 Orioles 5 (10 innings)

You know, I have people tell me that ‘small ball wins games’ every day. Course there are many many games where small ball costs you.

Tonight was a case in point, 3 times:

• In the 4th inning, after we scored 3 runs. The inning started with Jose Bautista hit by pitch, a Jeter style hit by pitch (it might have brushed him, maybe), a walk, a Justin Smoak single and a Devon Travis double. A Ryan Goins ground out later, and we have 3 in, 1 out, a runner on third and a pitcher in trouble. So? Well, we try to squeeze bunt against a pitcher who hasn’t been able to come near the plate. When the pitch, shockingly, was 2 feet off the outside edge and impossible to bunt, Travis was a dead duck. Throwing a terrible pitch helped Chris Tilman out of a bad inning.
• In the 7th, Chris Coghlan starts the inning with a single. Luke Maile, tries to bunt, fails (again pitches off the plate) and strikes out.
• In the 8th, Travis started the inning with a single. Ryan Goins bunted into a double play. This was the one bunt I thought was defendable (is that a word, it should be a word). Goins is hitting like Ryan Goins.....and he’s a guy that should be able to bunt.

Aaron Sanchez was pretty good, there was just the one bad moment. With 1 on in the 6th Welington Castillo hit a towering fly that didn’t look like a home run, but cleared the center field wall. I really didn’t think he got enough of it, but I was wrong.

He had to fight through the second inning too. 1-out single, hit batter, single, single scored the O’s a run and had the bases loaded, with just the 1 out. Aaron got a ground out to first, that Smoak went home on. They went back to first and had the double play, until it was overturned on replay. A pop out ended the inning.

Aaron went 6, allowed 6 hits, 3 earned, 2 walks with 4 strikeouts. I thought he pitched better than his line showed.

Danny Barnes, Joe Smith and Ryan Tepera each pitched an inning of scoreless relief.

Plate Umpire Jerry Meals was terrible. That was as poor a strike zone as I’ve seem this season.

We should have scored more. Through 9 innings we had 7 hits and 4 walks. Travis had 3 of the hits, including a double that was just a few feet off a home run. Bautista was 1 for 2 with a walk and a hit by pitch. We had 0 fors from Goins (0 for 3, walk, k), Barney (0 for 4, 2 k), Luke Maile (0 for 3, k) and Anthony Alford (0 for 2 before being lifted for a pinch hitter, though 1 of the outs was a crushed 103 MPH liner that found the left fielder’s glove. Aford made a couple of catches in left. The first came with one out, and he started running off the field, so he heard about it from his teammates.

This game had it all....including, Justin Smoak, striking out, on a pitch well off the plate, with the bases loaded. I thought we got a free run, but it turned out that the ball hit him and, after review, that ended the inning.

Top of the 10th, Bautista and Morales ground out. Smoak walked. Travis struck out to end the inning.

Then we go into rain delay.

After the delay, over an hour, Jason Grilli came into the game. Osuna warmed before the delay, and they didn’t ask him to warm again. Grilli got 2 ks and then gave up a single (Bautista took a circular route, boy I wish Bautista went straight to that ball), After that Welington Castillo hit his second homer of the game, to walk us off.

Jays of the Day: Tepera (.142 WPA), Joe Smith (.110) and Barnes (.090).

Suckage: Grilli (-.358), Goins (-.154) and Carrera (-.112). Let’s give Gibby one for the bunt calls. I’d like to give Bautista one for not going after that fly, but I won’t.

We had 1418 comments in the GameThreads Rivervillian led us to....defeat.