Blown save for Tyler Clippard, Jays lose

Angels 5 Blue Jays 3

Tyler Clippard was terrible in the 9th. With 1 out, he walked the bases loaded and then gave up a game tying single. Another single (thought a drown in infield and 2 more scored. Neither ball was hit well but, you load the bases, you don’t leave yourseft room for error.

Jake Petricka came in and gave up another hit before getting out of the inning. By then it was too late.

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The bottom of the inning was nuts too.

Dwight Smith led off with a single, bringing the tying run to the plate, then Curtis Granderson doubled. I thought it was going to be a triple but no reason to push it. Tying run at second no outs.

Kendrys Morales pinch hit and hit a ball off the wall in center. I thought it was going to be out of the park. The runners tagged so Grandson didn’t score from second,

Teoscar Hernandez flied out to medium right. Granderson tried to score, gotta try, but he was out at the plate.

Josh Donaldson was walked.

Justin Smoak struck out.

Tons of spots to second guess. Should Granderson have gone home. I thought so. It was a heck of a throw that got him. I thought the chance of tying made it worthwhile.

Should Granderson have been half way on the Morales hit? I thought so at the time, I thought it didn’t look like the outfielders were going to catch that, so get a few feet off the bag at second. But if it was caught and he didn’t tag up we would have been mad. Seemed like tagging was the safe move with no outs. Safe turned out to be the wrong choice.

Run for Morales? Well we were down to Maile on the bench. and no middle infielders if we tied. Solarte would have gone from DH to second likely. Pitcher would have been in the lineup. Martin would have likely played SS. I don’t know how many more players you’d want to use.

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Aaron Sanchez pitched 5 scoreless innings, but he wasn’t particularly sharp. He allowed just 2 hits, but walked 5 (two of the walks were the fault of an umpire who seemed to have trouble calling strike three) with 2 strikeouts. Aaron gave up some fly balls to the track (Kevin Pillar made one amazing catch running inning to wall in center), add a couple of feet to some of those flies (more than one of them looked like a home run off the bat, and his line would have looked much worse. He’s gotta find a way to pitch later into games.

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So the top of the 6th was one of the strangest innings you’ll ever see. The Angels got 3 singles against John Axford. Two of the singles were pop flies that landed out of reach of the fielders. Life is like that sometimes. 1 run scored and Axford was out with runners on first and second.

In comes Seunghwan Oh. This is where it gets strange. Kole Calhoun hit a fly ball to left that Curtis Granderson drove for and almost caught. The key term was almost. The runner on second went half way to third (like he should have) and then, when he thought there was a catch he started back to second (the third base ump did signal out, but the runner turned back before the call), then, when he was the ball was on the ground, turned around again, went to third. Granderson threw to third and Donaldson tagged him out. Tough play for the Angels but that’s baseball.

Oh then struck out Ian Kinsler (boring). Still runners on first and second.

Next Mike Trout singled to left. Runner from second goes home. Runner from first goes to third, but Granderson throws to third. Donaldson makes a great back handed, no look tag. Runner out, third out. And the runner going home hadn’t scored yet. Angels appealed but the call on the field was right. Weird inning and we were very very lucky to get through it with just 1 run against.

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In the seventh, we used 3 relievers. Danny Barnes started the inning, handing a walk to Justin Upton (who stole second) and got Albert Pujols to ground out.

Aaron Loup came in to face lefty batter Shohei Ohtani and he struck him out. A very good job by Loup.

Out goes Loup, in comes Ryan Tepera. who got the 3rd out and pitched a nice quick 8th. I’m never a fan of using three guys in one inning, but Loup really should be a LOOGY in this type of game.

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We didn’t do much on offense. Just 9 hits and 2 walks. Two of our hits were solo homers, one from Devon Travis and the other from Yangervis Solarte. Solarte also singled home Josh Donaldson for our third run, in the fifth inning.

Solarte was the only Jay with 2 hits. He’s now had 2 hits in each of his last 4 starts.

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Jays of the Day: Sanchez has the number (.284) so let’s give him one. Oh (.204), Tepera (.123), Solarte (.149), Travis (.091), Smith (.095), Morales had a .216 but he really should have made it to second on the ball off the wall. He may have rolled first, seen Granderson tagging and stopped. But then he came with in a couple of feet of winning it.

Suckage: Clippard (-.842), Teoscar had a -.541 but a lot of that was the out at the plate, Axford (-.220), Smoak (-.211)

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