Another walk-off loss for the Blue Jays

Blue Jays 4 Orioles 3

All was good until the bottom of the ninth.

Roberto Osuna gave up a homer to Welington Castillo, to blow the save in the 9th. That was Castillo’s second homer of the game. Two outs later, we had more drama. Manny Machado walked and Jonathan Schoop had an infield single. Ryan Goins did a nice job of getting to the ball, I thought he should have gone to second, but he threw to first and was just barely late with the throw. Watching the replay a couple of times, I’m more sure he should have gone to second. Thankfully he got out of the inning without the winning run scoring.

Brett Anderson had his second good start, since coming up to the Jays. 6 innings, 7 hits, 3 earned, 0 walks, 3 strikeouts and 2 home runs. He only threw 59 pitches, so I was a bit confused as to why he was pulled. He did give up home runs to Welington Castillo and Mark Trumbo. He gave up a lot of fly balls.

Other than Roberto, in the 9th, and Barnes, in the 13th, the bullpen did the job:

• Tom Koehler gave up a couple of singles, to start the 7th, just to add a degree of difficulty to his scoreless inning. He was helped out by a Joey Rickard popped up bunt (bunting with runners on first and second is stupid).
• Ryan Tepera gave up a single and handed out an intentional walk in his scoreless inning (nothing comes easy this year).
• Carlos Ramirez started the 10th. He gave up a 1-out double to Chris Davis that just got past Urena, playing mid-right field in the shift. But he got Trumbo to strikeout and Castillo to fly out. He came back for the 11th, getting a nice quick 3 up 3 down, including a Machado strikeout.
• Danny Barnes got the 13th. He gave up a leadoff double to Schoop. He got Adam Jones to strikeout (looked like he was over-swinging), Trey Mancini to ground out. But, after a Chris Davis intentional walk, Mark Trumbo doubled to left to end the game.

Offensively, we didn’t do much, 6 hits and 6 walks (we were out hit 15-6, so it is a surprise the game went on as long as it did).

The big hit was Josh Donaldson’s 3-run homer in the second, after newcomers Richard Urena (walk, first of 3 walks he had today) and Teoscar Hernandez (single) got on base. That gave us a 3 run lead.

In the 7th, Goins hit a ground ball that deflected off Machado at third. Goins ran it out hard and got a double out of it. An Urena ground out moved him to 3rd. Then pinch hitter Michael Saunders drove one hard right at first baseman Chris Davis, but Davis couldn’t make a play.

We had a chance, in the 11th. Jose Bautista started things off with a walk, but Kendrys Morales hit a hard grounder, right at the first baseman, for an easy double play.

We did nothing in the 12th. It feels like we haven’t scored in extras all season.

There were some very good defensive plays. Josh Donaldson caught a very very hard line drive hit at him. And Ryan Goins made a terrific play early in the game:

Jays of the Day: Donaldson (.284), Ramirez (.285), Saunders (.177 for the pinch hit go ahead single). Tepera (.145 WPA), Koehler (.110)

Suckage: Barnes (-.358), Osuna (-.291), Morales (-.263, much of it on the double play ball in the 12th), Pearce (-.189, all on a pinch hit double play ball in the top of the 10th),Smoak (-.242) and Pillar (-.134).

We had 518 comments in the GameThread. TimmyMax led the way.