Yangervis Solarte hits 2 home runs, Jays win

Nationals 5 Blue Jays 6

Scoring is fun, we out to keep doing it. Glad to see us hitting homers again. Solarte is such a streak hitter, he got the 2 homers today, maybe he can hit a few more this week. And great to see Travis turn on a pitch too.

The way the game started, I thought it was going to be one of those stupid games where we got beat by weak hits and bad defense.

Aaron Sanchez had great stuff, but seemed to be pitching in bad luck. He gave up a run in each of the first two innings. In the first a walk to Harper, who stole, and a soft single in front of Randal Grichuk, who fumbled it a bit, but Harper was likely to score anyway.

In the second inning, it started with a hard hit ball. 19-year-old Juan Soto hit one to the wall in center. Kevin Pillar got there, jumped but missed it. It was a double. Tough catch but I expect Kevin to make those. A soft line drive just out of the reach of Diaz scored him. Next batter had an infield single just out of everyone’s reach, but Aaron got out of the inning.

Nationals scored one more off Sanchez in the 5th. Trea Turner singled, stole second, went to third on Anthony Rendon’s single and scored on a ‘wild pitch’ that Russell Martin should have blocked.

In all Aaron pitched 6 innings, gave up 6 hits, 3 earned, 2 walks with 8 strikeouts. To me he pitched better than the line looks. Balls just out of reach of fielders can drive you crazy.

On offense, we got some home runs. Yangervis Sotarte homered twice, driving home 3. Devon Travis had a 2-run homer. and we got a sac fly on by Justin Smoak.

We got an gift run. in the 7th, Devon Travis singled to start the inning, then Teoscar Hernandez hit a fly ball to deep right that Adam Eaton lost in the sky, and it bounced over the wall for a ground rule double, giving us runners on second and third. Smoak hit a sac fly and Solarte followed with a home run.

We had 10 hits, with the 3 home runs and 4 doubles. Lots of hard contact. Solarte had 3 hits. Diaz and Travis had 2 each. We got 0 fors from Pillar, Martin and Grichuk (

The bullpen had a tough time, and made us sweat:

• Seunghwan Oh pitched an excellent 7th inning, no baserunners and 1 strikeout.
• Aaron Loup started the 8th and gave up a single on a 2 strike count to Bryce Harper. Harper just sliced it off and it landed in front of Teoscar. Not hit well but counts.
• John Axford came in a gave up a double to Anthony Rendon and a single to Daniel Murphy to make it 6-4. A double play ball scored 1 and made it a 1 run game. Axford got of the the inning from there.
• Ryan Tepera came in to get the save. He gave up a leadoff single, to Wilmer Difo. Difo stole second (on a pitchout, bad throw from Martin, going into the outfield, but Aledmys Diaz decoyed Difo and he didn’t go to third. A fly out moved him to third with only 1 out. But Ryan got a ground out to the drawn in infield and a strikeout to end the game. Pretty solid work for our new closer. Save number 4 on the season for Ryan.

Jays of the Day: Tepera (.170 WPA), Oh (.091), Solarte (.217), Travis (.212) and Hernandez (.142).

Suckage: Pillar (-.095). If he had made that catch, I’d pardon him. I’m going to give one to Martin too (-.018, 0 for 3, walk) but he had 3 steals against (one he had no shot on, but one was a pitch out) and he should have had that wild pitch.

We had 442 comments in the Kate’s Birthday GameThread. BlueJayEMT led us to victory. Great job sir.