Blue Jays score 15, sweep Royals

Royals 5 Blue Jays 15

Our offense has been so good of late. Almost everyone is contributing. It sometimes takes us a few inning to get going but, sooner or later, we put up some runs.

Today we scored early, in the middle innings and late. We scored:

• 1 in the first: Justin Smoak’s double brought home Teoscar Hernandez.
• 3 in the third: Curtis Granderson walked in front of Teoscar’s home run. An out later Yangervis Solarte hit a solo homer.
• 2 in the fifth: Solarte walked, Kevin Pillar singled, Randel reached second on a Paulo Orlando error (could have been ruled a hit, one of those 50/50 calls), scoring Solarte. Gibby brought Luke Maile in to pinch hit and he hit a 2-run single. Maile has been great and it seems like everything Gibby does works this year.
• 3 in the seventh: Randal Grichuk took a pinch off the forearm, an out later Maile doubled and Granderson walked. Teoscar followed with a 3-run triple.
• 6 in the eighth: Before our first out, Solarte singled, Russell Martin walked and Pillar doubled, scoring Solart. Aledmys Diaz blooped a single over a drawn in infield. Why have the infield in down 5 in the 8th? Granderson followed up with a grand slam.

Hernandez had a terrific day. 4 hits, just a double short of a cycle and 4 RBI. He had a shot at the cycle, but he struck out in the 8th. You have to think that he’s going to be staying up when Kendrys Morales is ready to come off the DL. Pillar was 3 for 5 with a pair of doubles. Solarte was 2 for 4 with a double. And Maile, coming into the game in the fifth, was 2 for 2 with a walk. Granderson had 2 hits (including the grand slam) and 2 walks.

The only Jays not to hit were Martin (who took 2 walks), Grichuk (hit batter and reached on error, which could have been a hit) and Gift Ngoepe (struck out looking twice).

On the pitching side, J.A. Happ wasn’t great, but then he didn’t have to be. He went 6 innings, allowed 5 hits, 2 walks, struck out 8 but gave up 4 earned.

The bullpen did the job. Danny Barnes, Aaron Loup, Ryan Tepera and Tim Mayza (finally getting into a game) all pitched. Loup gave up a Jorge Soler homer, the only run the bullpen allowed.

That was my first experience with a game on Facebook and I wasn’t impressed at all. The commentary was terrible. I switched over to listening to our radio guys by mid-game. Dan Shulman is terrific. I thought the camera work was not great. And, of course, I’d rather watch the game on my big screen TV. But we won, so I’ll stop complaining.

The Jays are now 12-5. And baseball is fun again.

Jays of the Day: Hernandez (.252 WPA), Maile (.122), Grichuk (.126, all off the error, but I’m giving him the award anyway, it could have been called a hit), Pillar (.116) and Smoak (.096).

Suckage: Happ (-.117), Diaz (-.123) and Martin (-.104). Really not fair to give them the ‘honor’ but they are big boys. They can handle it.

We had 1067 comments in the GameThread. Pretty great number for an afternoon game. DangYouToHeck led us to victory. Great work.