Grichuk homers and makes a game saving catch, Jays win

Blue Jays 6 Astros 3

So the bottom 9th wasn’t fun. Seunghwan Oh, pitching with a 3-run lead, gave up a leadoff walk and a single. Next batter, George Springer hit a liner that looked sure to go out, but Randal Grichuk made an amazing catch, high above the wall in right, saving the game for us. That was the catch of the season. Oh then got Alex Bergman to strikeout and Jose Altuve to strikeout looking. Altuve didn’t like the called, but it looked to be a good pitch to me.

That game had some of everything.

It started with the first at bat of the game. Curtis Granderson popped up a pitch and, well, it never came down. That’s not a analogy or hyperbola, it just didn’t come down. Don’t believe me?

And we scored runs off Justin Verlander. 4 earned runs. Verlander hadn’t given up 4 earned runs in a start as an Astro until tonight. And it didn’t really look like Verlander was having a bad night, it just seemed we were able to score on him.

We scored:

• 2 runs in the first inning: Teoscar Hernandez singled, Yangervis Solarte walks and then Justin Smoak pulled a fastball into right field, scoring both.
• 1 in the fifth: Curtis Granderson hit a solo homer.
• 1 in the seventh: Curtis Granderson homered again. A Hernandez single later and Verlander was out of the game.

We got two more runs in the 8th. Kendrys Morales led off the inning with a walk. After strikeouts by Smoak and Martin, Astros’ reliever Will Harris threw a wild pitch, moving Morales to second. Gibby pinch ran Gio Urshela. I’m guessing the Urshela hasn’t pinch run before. It didn’t matter, Randal Grichuk hit a massive homer to center field. It almost hit the train.

On the day we had 9 hits, including 3 homers. Hernandez had 3 hits. Granderson had the 2 homers. There were 0 fors for Solarte (but he did have a walk), Morales (with a walk) and Martin.

We should have score more. In the third inning Granderson led off with a walk and Hernandez doubled, giving us runners on second and third with no outs. But, Solarte popped out and Morales and Smoak struck out and we didn’t score.

J.A. Happ threw a ton of pitches, in the early innings, and I doubted he could get through 5 but he fought his way through 6 innings. He allowed 7 hits, 3 earned, 2 walks with 4 strikeouts. He gave up a home run to Alex Bregman. And he seemed to have runners on every inning, but he gets the quality start and the win.

Joe Biagini pitched a very nice 7th inning, giving up a walk, but getting 2 strikeouts.

John Axford pitched a quick 8th with a strikeout.

And Oh....well he turned a few more of my hair grey but he got the save.

We had some bad moments on defense. Granderson had a tough time with a ball hit to the wall (Gibby deserves a beer for putting Pillar into center and moving Grichuk to right for the 9th inning, Granderson could have never made that catch). Teoscar didn’t exactly rush in on a single hit in front of him, and then threw home well late, but then no one went out to be a cutoff man for him. The throw/lack of cutoff man cost us a base as the runner went to second. Thankfully it did cost us. And we showed a lack of range in the infield, perhaps costing us a single or two.

If you missed it, here is Randal’s catch in the 9th.

Jays of the Day: Granderson (.373, 2 homers and hitting a popup into space apparently), Grichuk (.128, homer, plus the game saving catch), Hernandez (.102, 3 for 5) and Biagini (.107).

Suckage: Martin (-.104). He could have helped with a timely hit.

We had 764 comments in the GameThread. lalalaprise led us to victory. Great job.