Bullpen day goes bad, Jays lose

Twins 8 Blue Jays 1

The bullpen game didn’t go as planned. I often say that the more relievers you use, the more likely you are going to come across the one that just doesn’t have it that day. When you use 6, you’ll find more than one that doesn’t have it that day. And, when you need the pen to pitch the game, sometimes you have to leave in the guy that just doesn’t have it.

Let’s run down the relievers who pitched today:

• Luis Santos started. He went two innings, gave up a run in the first on two hits. I thought that Teoscar Hernandez should have had both of the hits in the first. Joe Mauer led off with a double off the wall, Hernandez got to the wall, then gave up on it. It hit the wall about 7 feet up. Of course he was too close to the wall to make a play on it and he had to chase it back towards the infield. It wasn’t an easy play, but either he should have gone to get the ball or he should have been ready to play the ball off the wall.

An out later, Eduado Escobar hit a fly to left, Teoscar came in on it, dived, missed it, and it went for a triple.

All in Santos pitched 2 innings, 3 hits, 1 earned, 1 walk with 3 strikeouts. He was pretty good.

• Tim Mayza pitched the 3rd inning and gave up 2 earned on 2 hits and a walk. He started the 4th inning, got a strikeout, then gave up 2 singles and was out of the game. In all, 1.1, 4 hits, 4 earned, 1 walk and 1 strikeout.
• Aaron Loup came in with 2 on and 1 out. He gave up a single, got a strikeout, gave up a single and got a strikeout. Neither single was hit hard (in fact the second single bounced past Yangeris Solarte close enough that if he fell down sideways it would have hit him, but he didn’t make a move on the ball. His line, 2 outs, 2 singles, scoring the 2 runs that went against Mayza.
• Joe Biagini pitched the 5th. He was terrible. 4 hits, 3 earned, 1 k. The 3 hits were all extra base hits, all hit hard, 2 home runs and a double. Being far to Joe, he pitched yesterday and was very good yesterday.
• Jake Petricka was excellent in the 6th. Clean inning (our first of the day, with 2 strikeouts. He pitched yesterday as well. He’s looking great.
• Jaime Garcia pitched the 7th, 8th and 9th and he was great as well. No base runners, 3 strikeouts. The best he’s looked since his first couple of starts this season. I wish he started.

Offensively? We only scored 3 runs. One on a Lourdes Gurriel solo homer, his 5th of the season. And two, in the 9th: Smoak doubled on a pop fly down the right field line. The Twins 2B made a good effort at it, running 113 feet after it, but just missing it. Had the right fielder made the same effort, it would have been an easy out. Justin moved up on a wild pitch. Teoscar walked. Solarte hit a sac fly. Then Kendrys singled home Hernandez.

By that, you would think we didn’t hit. But we had 11 hits and 5 walks. We should have scored more.

We had 3 hits from Smoak. 2 each from Gurriel (his 6th multi hit game in a row), Morales and Devon Travis. And we had 0 fors from Randal Grichuk, Dwight Smith and Luke Maile.

We had base runners in 8 of 9 innings and, in the 6th inning, we loaded the bases, with no outs, on singles by Solarte, Kendrys Morales and Travis and still didn’t score. Smith struck out, Maile struck out (chasing a pitch that was head high) and Grichuk flied out.

It was one of those nights. We left 12 on base.

By the numbers, there was no Jay of the Day, but I’m giving one to Garcia.

Suckage: Mayza (-.177), Loup (-.096), Biagini (-.080) and Solarte (-.105), who came to bat with 7 runners on base and plated 1 of them, in the 9th inning.

We had 552 comments in the GameThread, a pretty good number for a game that was over in the early innings. MartsB led the way to victory. He’s been missing for a bit, so he had a lot to say.