A short outing from Sanchez and lousy relief work adds up to a Jays loss.

A’s 9 Blue Jays 5

That start pretty much told the story of Aaron Sanchez’ season. Good moments, but pretty poor all in all.

He had a long first inning, but got out of it without giving up a run. He loaded the bases, and threw 26 pitches.

Second inning was terrific, 2 strikeouts and a ground out. Just a terrific job.

Third inning the wheels came off. With 1 out he gave up a single, double and then a home run.

Fourth inning, back too good. A leadoff walk, but that’s it.

Fifth inning starts off with a walk and that’s it, he’s out of the game. 4 innings, 5 hits, 4 earned, 4 walks and 8 strikeouts. I like the strikeouts, that’s about it.

For a change, our bullpen was terrible too.

Seunghwan Oh relieved Sanchez and gave up 4 hits, 3 earned (plus the inherited runner Aaron left him) and 1 walk. His ERA jumped from 1.45 to 2.79.

Aaron Loup finally got us out of the inning.

John Axford gave up a 2-run homer of his own (just when it seemed like we were making a comeback.

Ryan Tepera and Tyler Clippard each had a scoreless inning.

Offensively, we were pretty ok, other than we should have scored more than we did. We had 7 hits and 7 walks, so we had some baserunners.

Kevin Pillar and Richard Urena had 2 hits each. Curtis Granderson walked 3 times and Russell Martin walked twice.

Missing out on the fun were Josh Donaldson was 0 for 4, with 3 strikeouts and a walk. He isn’t right, he’s chasing off the plate way too much. And Kendrys Morales was 0 for 4, with an RBI ground out. He was also the ‘run’ part of a hit and run, which surprised me (and kept us out of a double play). Kendrys did have a hard hit ball in the 8th, lining a ball to deep left. Left fielder Matt Joyce made a very nice catch. Hardly fair.

We had the bases loaded in the 8th inning, tying run at the plate, and Josh up, just the moment for him to break out of his slump. But Josh ground out.

Josh is going to have to start hitting soon. We really need him.

Jays of the Day: Let’s give one to Pillar (.091 WPA, 2 for 4).

Suckage: Oh (-.185), Sanchez (-.159), Morales (-.107) and Donaldson (-.097).

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