Blue Jays win Joe Biagini’s first MLB start

Blue Jays 2 Rays 1

You couldn’t have hoped for better from Joe Biagini, in his first MLB start. He went 4 innings, allowed just one unearned run (a Devon Travis error let Kevin Keirmaier reach first, a ground out advanced him to second (nice play by Russell Martin to get the batter at first) and Kiermaier scored on a Corey Dickerson single).

Biagini allowed just 2 hits, with no walks and 4 strikeouts in 4 innings, throwing 61 pitches. That was more pitches than I expected from Joe, but he looked strong through to the end of the 4th.

Our bullpen did a great job, again. 5 scoreless innings with just 1 hit against, with 2 walks. We had:

• 1 perfect inning from Aaron Loup.
• 2 innings, with 1 walk and 4 strikeouts from Ryan Tepera.
• 1 perfect inning from Joe Smith with 1 strikeout.
• And Roberto Osuna picked up his 4th save. He did give up a 2-out walk and single, just to get our hearts beating, but a Daniel Robertson strikeout ended things.

Offensively, we did just enough.

• In the 6th, Kevin Pillar hit a 1-out double, then, after Jose Bautista popped out, Russell Martin singled Pillar home.
• On the 8th, Darwin Barney hit a home run that turned out to be the game winner.

We only had 4 hits and 2 walks on the day. Pillar had 2 of the hits, and then the Martin RBI single and Barney’s home run.

Rays starter Alex Cobb (and all the other pitchers of the day) was helped out from a very large strike zone from plate umpire Larry Vanover. He seemed to be giving the pitchers strikes on all four edges of the plate. Not a complaint really, I thought he was very fair, just made life tough on the batters.

We only struck out 5 times, but we had a lot of weak contact.

Jays of the Day: Osuna (.191 WPA), Tepera (.159, he seems to be doing a great job in the multi inning spots), Smith (.137), Barney (.161) and Pillar (.132). And let’s give one to Biagini, he didn’t get the number, but he was great.

Suckage: Bautista (-.146, 0 for 4, 1 k), Smoak (-.105, 0 for 4, 1 k) and Morales (-.095, 0 for 4, 1 k).

We had 504 comments in the GameThread. TimmyMaxx led us to victory. Great Job.