Great start from Stroman wasted, Jays lose in extras

Blue Jays 1 Cleveland 2 (10 innings)

Not much to say about that one, Marcus Stroman was great. The offense wasn’t.

Stroman went 7.2, allowed 5 hits, 4 singles and a double, 5 walks, with 7 strikeouts. As usual, he kept the ball on the ground, 12 ground outs, 1 fly out (ever think that the Jays should add an extra infielder and go with 2 outfielders in his starts?).

He had some troubles finding the strike zone, but he looked as good as he’s ever looked. He gave out 2 walks and his 1 run, in the 4th. Marcus seemed to be dealing with a finger issue (yet another blister?), early in the game, and he seemed to be having the most trouble with it in that 4th inning.

Stroman left the game with 2 outs and 2 on in the 8th and Ryan Tepera came in and got a strikeout to get out of the inning.

Joe Biagini gave up a walk, but got out of the 9th with 2 strikeouts.

Danny Barnes gave up the leadoff walk-off homer, to Francisco Lindor, in the 10th.

Offensively......we did almost nothing. 3 hits, one of them Justin Smoak’s 27th home run and 2 walks. Amazingly enough, in a game where we only had 5 base runners, we hit into 2 double plays. One of the double plays was a stupid one. With Darwin Barney on first, Jose Bautista hit a pretty deep fly and Barney decided to try to tag up and go to second. Michael Brantley made a very nice throw, and I guess we weren’t doing anything offensively, so try to make something happen? I don’t know, seemed dumb to me.

Jays of the Day: Stroman (.240 WPA), Biagini (.141) and Smoak (.304, not just the home run, but he took a 2-out walk in the top of the 10th).

Suckage: Barnes (.359), Bautista (.282, 0 for 4, k), Morales (-.205, 0 for 4, 2 k), Pillar (-.173, 1 for 4), Goins (-.161, 0 for 2, walk, k) and Martin (-.102, 0 for 4, k).

Basically suckage for everyone in the lineup not named Justin.

There was 414 comments in the GameThread. I decided to drink instead of joining in (which you could likely guess by reading the recap). DangYouToHeck led the way. Great job.