Thursday news

I’d rather not dwell too much on the ground zero of our defeat last night, other than to say that Tyler Clippard’s 9th inning meltdown reminded me of Sergio Santos or BJ Ryan...and not in a good way.

Its Clippard’ss second blown save of the season and while he still has a 3.24 ERA and 10.1 K/9 through 25 innings on the season, his 5.4 BB/9 makes him a less than reliable option to close.

Tom sums up the craziness of last night in his excellent game recap.

Meanwhile, Aaron Sanchez continues to struggle due to death-by-a-thousand-walks.

As Arden Zwelling says over on Sportsnet, its becoming a worrying trend:

He walked five Wednesday, making it the fifth time in 10 starts this season that he’s issued at least four.

After Wednesday’s start — an otherwise fine outing in which he threw five innings of shutout ball — Aaron has walked 34 over 55.1 innings pitched this season. That’s the second-most of any pitcher in the majors, and his 5.53 BB/9 is fourth among MLB starters.

His last time out, Sanchez had even better stuff, earning 15 swinging strikes. But he threw 97 pitches over only four innings. The outing before that he threw 96 over five. He hasn’t completed more than five innings since April, and he’s walked three or more in each of his last five outings. It’s the one thing keeping him from a much stronger season.

Elsewhere, the Chiefs put an end to the Bisons six-game win streak with a 7-2 victory over the Herd. Ryan Borucki and Bison pitching coach Bob Stanley were both ejected in the 6th inning.

Anthony Alford is now hitting .145 and Ricard Urena is hitting .125 - so its likely we will see them recalled soon.

At AA the Fisher Cats sit alone at the top of the Eastern Division standings and are a season-high 11 games over .500. They knocked the stuffing out of the Reading Fightin Phils with a 7-2 victory.

Cavan Biggio had his first three hit game of the season and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. raised his average to a Minor League Baseball-best .425 through 43 games.

And given how Vlad is doing right now, it was only a matter of time:

And to remind us all that baseball can be fun, the Braves’ Australian pitcher Peter Moylan forgets to look ‘down under’: