Jays hit 6 home runs, and beat Rays

Blue Jays 7 Rays 6

That was a game of home runs, we hit 6, the Rays hit 3.

It should have been a lot easier. We were up 5-0 after 2 innings. We had a Josh Donaldson 2-run homer in the first (Pearce doubled to start the game). In the second we had homers from Ryan Goins, Raffy Lopez (his first career homer) and Steve Pearce.

Things looked good. But we didn’t get vintage Marcus. He gave up a home run in each of the third, fourth and fifth innings. Kevin Kiermaier hit two of them.

Justin Smoak had his solo homer in the fifth, so we ended the fifth up 6-4.

In the bottom of the 6th, Marcus gave up back-to-back 1-out singles and that was it for him. He went just 5.1, allowed 8 hits and a walk. He was looking at his hand a fair bit, I’m thinking there might be a blister issue again.

Danny Barnes came in and allowed one of the inherited runners to score (the 5th earned run against Marcus), before getting out of the inning.

Barnes started the seventh inning with 2 walks and that was it for his night.

Ryan Tepera gave up an RBI single to Evan Longoria and we had a tie game. It was looking bad. Tepera gets the win (and a blown save).

But Kevin Pillar hit our 6th home run of the game, off the Travelling Man, Tommy Hunter, to lead off the eighth.

I was worried it wouldn’t be enough, but Aaron Loup got the first 2 outs of the eighth inning, before giving up a single to Kiermaier.

Gibby brought in Osuna to go for the 4-out save. I was worried about the Osuna/Lopez combo, after that awful game in Chicago. But Osuna got the 4 outs without making us sweat. That’s save #33 of the season for Roberto.

We had 11 hits, but all that mattered were the 6 homers. Barker tells us that every one of those homers were with 2 strikes. Everyone in the starting lineup had a hit tonight.

Fangraphs seems to have quit in the 4th inning.

Let’s give a JOD to Pillar for the game winner. And Osuna for the save. And Pearce for the 2 extra base hits, double and homer.

Stroman likely deserves a Suckage Award, but everyone is allowed a bad day, now and then.

We had 324 comments in the GameThread. TimmyMax led the way to victory. Good job.

The tweet with the most recs was this one: