Summer LOBsterfest: Jays Lose

Angels 2 - Blue Jays 1

Marco Estrada was fabulous. After running into a little bit of trouble in the first inning, allowing a walk and a pair of hits with 2 outs which resulted in the Angels only 2 runs scoring, he retired 18 of the final 20 batters he faced. He had 6 easy outs (<20% hit probability - mostly popouts) as well as 7 strikeouts over his 7 innings.

Tyler Clippard pitched a perfect 8th inning, as both he and Estrada helped their trade values, which is about all we have to cheer for at the moment.

The offense was a bucket of frustration tonight. After scoring 5 runs on 9 hits last night, the Jays scored just 1 run on 9 hits tonight. They had at least one runner on base in innings 2-7, and only once got the runner to come around to score, when Devon Travis drove a double to the right centre field gap to score Aledmys Diaz from 1B in the 7th inning. After that double, Pearce lined one to CF that was trapped, but ruled a catch and Travis couldn’t move to 3B. After review, the call was overturned, but Travis wasn’t moved to 3B because reasons. So runners on 1st and 2nd instead of 1st and 3rd with 1 out. But it didn’t matter as Smoak struck out and Solarte hit a soft liner to LF.

Other than that, the Jays didn’t really have a good chance of scoring off Andrew Heaney. Outside of that 7th inning, they only had 2 other baserunners reach with less than 2 outs, and Devon Travis was the only one to be in scoring position with less than 2 outs. The Jays went just 1-6 with RISP, with the only hit being Pearce’s liner that didn’t move Travis up.

In total, the Jays left 8 of their 9 runners on base.

Steve Pearce in his return collected 3 hits, including a double in 4 at bats. He played left field, and aside from an inconsequential inability to stop a double from getting to the wall, he was fine out there. I’d still rather he didn’t play out there, but it’s nice to have his bat back.

Kendrys Morales remained hot, going 2-4 with a pair of ground ball singles.

Kevin Pillar snapped his dozen or so hitless streak with a 2 out double in the 6th.

Otherwise, there’s not much to say. Marco Estrada was great, so was Andrew Heaney.

Mike Trout never reached base, going 0-3 with a pair of strikeouts. The Blue Jays didn’t draw a walk today for the first time all season. Andrelton Simmons struck out for the first time in over a month. All things must come to an end.

Jays of the Day: Nobody. Travis had the high mark at .087.

Suckage Jays: Grichuk (-.185, 3 times hit to Luis Valbuena who had to make a good play - and he also hit one that looked to wrap around the RF pole in the 7th, but Gibbons inexplicably didn’t challenge it even though it was the 7th inning), Smoak (-.163, he hasn’t looked good at the plate for a while) and Solarte (-.151).

We had a quiet gamethread tonight, with all of 154 comments. barraqudie unsurprisingly was the most vocal one in an Estrada start, but she couldn’t convince the offense to support Estrada tonight. Nice try though.