Despite shaky relief work, Jays beat Rangers

Blue Jays 7 Rangers 4

That was way too tense for a game that we scored early and often.

We had a great first inning.

Steve Pearce started the game off with a home run on the first pitch. Then Justin Smoak and Yangervis Solarte had back-to-back singles. Kendrys Morales followed with an opposite homer. I didn’t think it was going out, but it cleared the wall by a few feet.

So it was 4-0 before the Rangers got to swing a bat.

We scored another in the 3rd. Smoak (single), Solarte (walk) and Morales (single) loaded the bases and Kevin Pillar singled.

And we got 2 more in the 6th. Pillar reached on Elvis Andrus second throwing error of the game, went to second on a balk and scored on Luke Maile’s double (Luke 3rd double and 4th RBI, he had 5 and 7 last year). A Curtis Granderson pinch-hit single scored Maile.

We had 11 hits. Everyone in the lineup had a hit except Randal Grichuk (0 for 4, 2 k, having a terrible start to the season) and Aledmys Díaz (0 for 4, 1 k).

Our offense did well, excepting the 2 innings that Bartolo Colon pitched. Colon allowed just an infield single and had 4 strikeouts. Pretty good for a pitcher who faced Ty Cobb.

7 runs should have made this a laugher, but we kept trying to let the Rangers back in the game.

Jaime Garcia was very good, until his last pitch. He allowed a run in the first. After that he was in control until the 5th, when he gave up a 1-out, 2 run Joey Gallo homer and that was the end of his day. In all 5.1 innings, 5 hits, 3 earned, 2 walks and 5 strikeouts. He was better than his line suggests.

• Tyler Clippard relieved Garcia and gave up a walk, but got a fly out and a strikeout to end the inning.
• Aaron Loup started the 7th. He gave up a single, got a force out at second (a very nice play from Smoak) and gave up a soft hit ground ball, that ran up the third base line for a double. He was unlucky on that one, but then he was lucky lucky on the Smoak play.
• Ryan Tepera came in with two on and one out and walked Andrus to load the bases. Then he went to a full count on Adrian Beltre, before getting a strikeout and he got Gallo to pop out. It was a tense inning. Starting the 8th, Ryan gave up a walk and got another full count strikeout.
• Seung Hwan Oh came in and gave up a single, got a ground out and gave up another single, scoring the Rangers’ 4th run.
• Roberto Osuna came in to try for a 4-out save. He hit Rougned Odor (well, grazed his uniform, if you are going to hit that guy, you should hit him) to load the bases. Thankfully he got Andrus to ground out to end the inning. He had a nice drama free 9th, getting his 4th save.

Our relievers went 3,2, and allowed 4 hits, 3 walks, 1 hit batter, but just 1 earned run.

Jays of the Day: Morales (.195 WPA), Tepera (.113), Garcia (.112) and Osuna (.110).

Suckage: Grichuk (-.090). Loup came close (-.072).

A series win, our second in a row. We are now 6-4 and if we can go 6-4 every 10 games, we’ll be very happy.

Tomorrow we play the Orioles in Baltimore, for the start of a 3-game series.

We had 736 comment in the GameThread. DangYouToHeck led us to victory again.