Great start from Stroman, Jays win

Orioles 1 Blue Jays 4

The second day in a row where we get a very good start.

Marcus Stroman went 7 innings, allowed 5 hits, 1 earned, 2 walks with 7 strikeouts. He was getting ground ball, 9 ground outs and 2 fly outs.

He had a bit of trouble in the first inning, giving up 3 straight singles (and his lone run) to start off the game. He was helped out by a great throw from left by Teoscar Hernandez. Jonathan Schoop tried to stretch his singled into a double and Teoscar made a perfect throw to second. Great to see Teoscar make a good play in the field. That was followed by a nice double play and Marcus was out of trouble.

Being fair, both Stroman and Orioles starter Alex Cobb benefitted from a very wide Joe West strike zone. Joe must have had an early dinner reservation. Anything within a couple of feet of the outside edge was a strike.

Seunghwan Oh pitched a quick 8th and Ryan Tepera a quick 9th, helped by a terrific catch in center by Randal Grichuk, who ran into the wall to make the catch.

Offensively, we did enough.

We scored 3 in the 4th inning. Justin Smoak led off with a walk. Yangervis Solarte followed with what looked like a double play ball, but, my favorite Oriole, Tim Beckham, didn’t touch second on the throw to second and then threw wide of first. Grichuk doubled home one and then, after a Kendrys Morales walk, we score another on a double play.

We scored our other run on a balk. Teoscar doubled (I thought it was going out), moved up on a deep fly by Smoak and then, not being held at third, walked halfway down the third base line, made sure to get Cobb’s attention. Cobb started his motion then stepped off the rubber. Scott Carson sent me this tweet:

We only had 6 hits and 4 walks, but we grouped them well and got helped out by terrible Orioles defense.

Aledmys Diaz and Luke Maile had 2 hits each. Grichuck and Hernandez had the other two hits.

Jays of the Day: Stroman (.264 WPA) and Grichuk (-.141, plus the catch). And lets give one to Hernandez for drawing the balk and making that great throw in the first. Without that throw it might have been a different game.

No Suckage Jays.

We got good defense today. The only bad play of the day was Diaz getting thrown out trying to go from first to third on a single, with two outs. Aggressive play, but he was out fairly easily.

Tomorrow we go for the sweep.

We had just 197 comments in the GameThread. I led us to victory again.