A’s beat Jays

Blue Jays 1 A’s 4

I felt bad for Marco Estrada tonight. He wasn’t great, but he wasn’t that bad. He could have used a bit of help from his defense.....and from his offense.

Marco gave up a run in the first. Rajai Davis led off with a double. He moved to third on a 1-out single that I thought Jose Bautista should have caught. Then he scored on a shallow sac fly, a ball that I thought Jose should have been able to catch setting up for the throw home. Instead Jose caught it rather flat-footed, and his throw home was terrible.

Marco gave up another run in the 5th. A one out walk and then a double that Ezequiel Carrera bobbled, allowing the runner from first, Stephen Vogt, to think he could score, but cutoff man Troy Tulowitzki made a great throw to the plate to get Vogt. That was followed by a seeing eye ground ball single scoring the runner from second.

Another 2 runs scored in the 6th. A single and then a double over Kevin Pillar’s head. I expect Kevin to catch all of those. I know it isn’t fair, but he wasn’t superman on that one. A strikeout later, Ryon Healy (his parents didn’t know how to spell Ryan apparently) lined one towards Carrera. Ezequiel, for reasons only he could explain, dove at the ball, while turning his head away from it, and surprise, he missed. It seems like Carrera gives us at least one awful play every start. It should have been the last out of the inning, instead 2 runs scored.

Marco went 5.2, allowed 7 hits (some catches in the outfield and it would have been 3 or 4 hits), 4 ‘earned’, 1 walk with 8 strikeouts.

Aaron Loup got the last out of the 6th. Dominic Leone pitched a very quick 7th. Ryan Tepera had an equally quick 8th.

Offensively?

We hit more line drives into gloves. Pillar had two crushed liners find glove. Bautista, with Donaldson on, smoked one to center, caught (109 mph off the bat).

And we ran into outs.

In the 3rd inning, Ryan Goins tried to score from second on Donaldson infield single and was out by 10 feet. Pillar, in the 5th, singled down the right field line, but tried to stretch it into a double, he was out by a fair distance too, and Donaldson follows him in the batting order. If there was an 11th commandment, it would say ‘don’t get thrown out on the bases in front of Donaldson and Bautista.

We had 8 hits (one more than the A’s) and 3 walks, but just the 1 run.

Bad Defense, bad base running and bad offense makes for a tough combination for a team looking for a win.

No Jays of the Day.

Suckage: Estrada (-.195 WPA), Goins (-.192, 1 for 3, plus the out at the plate (though Rivera did wave him in)) and Pillar (-.102, 1 for 4, plus thrown out at second on his ‘hit’) and Maile (-.090, 0 for 4, 3 k and he watched the last strike cross the plate to end the game). And let’s give one to Ezequiel, since he could have saved us 2 runs with a catch that any outfielder could have made.

We had 769 comments in the GameThread. radivel led the way. Good job.