Nothing comes easy, but Jays Win

Blue Jays 6 Phillies 5

The bottom of the ninth was the most nerve racking inning I’ve gone through in a long time.

Ryan Tepera added a ton of gray to my hair. in the bottom of the ninth, up by two, he got the leadoff man. Then gave up a single, a double and a wild pitch to make it a 1-run game with the tying run at 3rd. Two walks loaded the bases with 1-out. He wasn’t coming anywhere close to the strike zone. Winning run now at second. Then he gets a strikeout on a perfect pitch, two outs. Odubel Herrera up. Herrera, swinging at the first pitch, chopped one to second for the third out. Never in doubt.

It is worth noting that Gibby went out to talk to Tepera, right after he loaded the bases, and Tepera suddenly found the strike zone. It looked like Gibby was very firm with Ryan.

Baseball is much better when you get a good start and the offense does offense type things. Now if the bullpen could right itself life would be good.

Sam Gaviglio gave us a good start. 6 innings, 3 hits, 3 earned, 2 walks and 6 strikeouts. Without the 2 home runs, it would have been that much better of a start, but he did the job needed.

And the offence did the job needed too.

We scored 3 in the first:

• Josh Donaldson hit a 1-out double, nicely pulled into the gap in left center. It has been awhile since we’ve seen Josh pull a pitch and get such hard contact.
• An out later Teoscar Hernandez hit one hard to the hole in short. SS Pedro Florimon made a nice play but his throw was well off line. Hernandez hustled down the line. At first it was called an error but it was changed to a single. Donaldson scored.
• Yangervis Solarte doubled, Hernandez scored from first.
• Kevin Pillar doubled, his first hit in days. Solarte scored. Pillar was chasing in his other at bats.

And we got 3 more in the 5th:

• Curtis Granderson singled.
• An out later, Justin Smoak homered. Nice to see Justin hit a ball hard too.
• Solarte singled (he had 2 hits again tonight).
• Kevin Pillar reached on an error. 3B Maikel Franco made a nice play on a ball down the line but his throw pulled the first baseman off the bag.
• Russell Martin singled home Solarte. Again, good to see Russell chip in on offense.

We had 11 hits, including a double by Gavigilio. We had 2 hits each from the middle of the order, Smoak, Hernandez and Solarte.

The bullpen gave us reason to worry or drink heavily.

• Seunghwan Oh gave up a leadoff walk, but then set the next 3 down in order, in the 6th.
• Tyler Clippard gave up a leadoff double (honestly I thought Teoscar should have caught it easily) and then another double scoring a run, but then he shut things down.
• And we’ve talked about the bottom of the ninth.

Jays of the Day: Gaviglio (.099 WPA). Tepera had a .095 and helped me with my weight loss plan by having me sweat out 10 pounds in the ninth, and let’s give one to Solarte (.084). Honorable mention to Smoak and Pillar.

No Suckage Jays.

We had 810 comments in the GameThread. Alan F. led us to victory. Good job sir.