More on last night’s Blue Jays win

Just some random thoughts on last night’s Blue Jays win.

Was that the best start of J.A. Happ’s Blue Jays career?

Happ went 7 innings (and I thought he could have gone out for the 8th), he allowed 4 hits, 3 singles and a double (one of those singles was a pop fly that really should have been caught, we called an error originally, and another was an infield hit), no walks, with 10 strikeouts.

Baseball Reference gives him a 75 game score. As a Blue Jay he’s had one game score better than that, a 77 back in 2014, against the White Sox, during his first stint with the Jays. On June 26 he went 7.2, allowed 4 hits, 2 walks, with 8 strikeouts and no earned runs. He had two 75 game scores that year and he had one 75 game score last year, July 30. In that games, against the Orioles he went 7 innings, allowed 3 hits, , 1 home run, 1 earned, 3 walks with 11 strikeouts.

But, considering Yesterday’s game was against the Red Sox, you might consider that his best start ever as a Blue Jay.

Where have all the strikeouts come from? Happ has struck out 33.6% of the batters (with a career low 5.7% walk rate) he’s faced. Career he’s struck out 20.5% of batters and last year he was a 22.7%. I don’t know what’s going on, but I like it.

And he pitched deep into the game. A lot of the time he builds up his pitch count early and has trouble getting through 6 innings. We really need a starter or two who can pitch us deep into games and give our bullpen a bit of a break.

Teoscar Hernandez is going to have to keep hitting, because his defense is going to drive me crazy. That popup between him and Diaz, that should have been an easy play for Hernandez but he never went after the ball. Then there was the double to left which, as Dan Shulman said he ‘lets the ball play him a little bit’ (not that that one cost us anything).

He had a couple of lackluster plays during the New York series too. I’m hoping that the coaches will talk to him about ‘going to get the ball’. He has enough athletic ability to be a good outfielder (of course we used to say the same about Ezequiel Carrera). Perhaps he’s just trying to be a little cautious out there.

Roberto Osuna had a bit of bad luck last night. A couple of balls that just missed gloves and a strike three pitch that wasn’t called strike, but he didn’t look very sharp. There are going to be nights like that. It’s too bad Happ didn’t get the win when he pitched so well. But, then we started 36 runs in his last 3 wins, so it balances out.

Who thought we’d like Curtis Granderson so much? He had a pretty good night, hits the walk-off home run, drives in 3 of our 4 runs and throws a runner out at the plate, when we really needed it.

Not about last night’s game, but Dalton Pompey is having a great start to his season. hitting .353/.450/.588 with 4 steals in his first four games for the Bisons.