Bad offence, defense and relief, Jays lose

Red Sox 7 Blue Jays 1

You wanna just go cut and paste any of the recaps from the last couple of weeks and throw it in here?

I’m pretty sure we’ve had a dozen games in a row like this: Good starting pitching, crappy relief pitching, crappy defense and no offense.

J.A. Happ threw 6 innings. He allowed 4 hits, 1 earned (a solo Hanley Ramirez homer), 4 walks (Happ wasn’t happy with the umpire’s strike zone) and 2 strikeouts. He pitched well. On most of the walks, ball four was a pitch that could have been called either way.

But, our bullpen was awful:

• Tom Koehler gave up a double and a Mitch Moreland homer, to start off the inning, and then got 3 quick outs, including a strikeout. Yeah, a little late.
• Tim Mayza started the 8th inning. He gave up a walk, 2 doubles and another walk, before he was removed. Mayza had a steal against him, with the runner going on first move.
• Aaron Loup came in, with 2 on and no outs. He got a strikeout, but, during the strikeout, Xander Bogaerts on second, took off for third, and Rafael Devers, seeing that, went for second, but Bogaerts stopped and Devers didn’t. Raffy Lopez threw to second, just late to get Devers, but Rob Refsnyder threw wide of first and we didn’t get either runner. Darwin Barney did a nice job diving to get the throw. Two singles later and both runners scored. Happ left a 1-1 game and 2 innings of relief work made it 7-1.

And, this is a recording, we didn’t do much on offense. 6 hits, 2 walks and 9 strikeouts. Our 1 run was a Lopez home run. That’s number 2 for him as a Jay.

Ezequiel Carrera (0 for 4, 2 k), Jose Bautista (0 for 4, 3 k) and Darwin Barney (0 for 4, but robbed twice on hard hit balls) all had 0 fors. Everyone else had 1 hit each.

Defensively, well, we didn’t have any official errors, but we missed at least 2 double plays that we should have turn. Robsnyder made 3 throws that were off by enough to cost us an out. Bautista missed, what I thought, was a catchable ball in the first inning, a line drive hit over him towards center. I thought he should have got it.

And we gave up 4 steals. Lopez wasn’t at fault on all of them. Mayza let the runner take off, even though he’s a lefty and facing the runner, before he even threw the pitch. And the play mentioned above in the 8th inning counted as two steals, though a decent throw from Refsnyer and we would have had the lead runner easy.

Jay of the Day is Happ (.225 WPA).

Suckage: Koehler (-.278) and Mayza (-.114). Also Barney (-.148), Carrera (-.135) and Bautista (-.092). Plus give one to Refsnyder for the bad throws. .

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