Speed wins one for the Blue Jays

Blue Jays 2 Rays 1

Who knew we were going to be manufacturing runs this year. Alford got our first run with speed, then, tied in the 9th, Pillar doubles, Kendrys Morales moved him to third with a ground ball to the right side (yeah I would have rather had a homer, but I’ll take it) and Pilar scored on a wide pitch.

It was going so well until Ryan Tepera gave up a long ball to Carlos Gomez, which tied up the game. He also gave up a 1-out walk to C.J. Cron. and then a balk on a throw to first. That got Gibby his second ejection of the series. Another single put runners on the corners. A strikeout and a ground out got us out of the inning tied.

That was the best start we’ve had from Marco Estrada this year. 6 scoreless innings. just 4 hits allowed (with 4 walks) and 3 strikeouts. That’s the Marco we have been waiting for, there were fly balls, but nothing that made it to the track. Keep it up Marco.

Tyler Clippard pitched the 7th and worried me by giving up a hard hit single to start the inning, but a pop out and 2 strikeouts got us out of the inning without any trouble.

Roberto Osuna came in for the 9th, and....he hasn’t been great of late, so we were worried. He started things with a k, then gave up a single up the middle. A ground ball force at second got us our second out. A ground out to third and Roberto got his 9th save and give Tepera a win.

We didn’t do much offensively. We did have a lot of warning track fly outs, but only had 7 hits and a walk.

Anthony Alford manufactured our run pretty much on his own. Singled, stole second and scored on Aledmys Diaz infield single.

Diaz turned his ankle on the play, hitting the edge of the bag and rolling his ankle, barely beating Chris Archer to the bag. Diaz has a ‘sprained ankle’ (at least according to the Jays). With tomorrow being an off-day, the team has a couple of days to decide if he needs to go on the DL or not.

Jays of the Day: Marco (.375 WPA), Pillar (.299) Clippard (.108), Osuna (.101).

Suckage: Tepera (-.198), Morales (-.11), Hernandez (-.096) and Donaldson (-.096).

We had 624 comments in the GameThread. Alan F led the way to victory. Great job.

I will mention that coming in and saying Game Over is not the way to make friends around here.