Great start from Thomas Pannone, Jays beat Orioles

Orioles 0 Blue Jays 6

That must have been the best start we’ve had this season.

Thomas Pannone went 6 no-hit innings. Gave up a single to start the 7th and then Teoscar Hernandez had a Teoscar Hernandez moment, booting an easy fly ball to give the O’s runners at second and third. But, Pannone, around 100 pitches, got a ground ball to third (great play by Russell Martin), a swinging bunt (which Pannone made a nice play, looking the runner back to third before throwing to first) and another ground out to Russell to end the inning.

7 innings, 1 hit, 2 walks, 1 hit back, 1 runner picked off first and 3 strikeouts. 108 pitches in all. He’s never thrown that many in the minors and he does it in his first major league start. Just terrific.

We didn’t do a heck of a lot with the bats. Orioles starter David Hess had a perfect game going until the 5th inning, when Kendrys Morales singled. And he had a shutout going until Morales crushed a homer in the 7th, to, finally, give Pannone a run of support.

We only had 3 hits through 7 innings. Morales had 2 of them.

Our old friend Miguel Castro had a very tough 8th. Teoscar led off with infield single. He went to second on a wild pitch. Danny Jansen walked (his hit streak ends). Richard Urena showed bunt, but Miguel threw another wild pitch and Urena followed with a double off the wall scoring 1 (Jansen held up to see if it would be caught). Another wild pitch scored another. McKinney walked. Then Devon Travis homered and Castro was out of the game, giving up 5 runs without getting an out, which ended out fun.

Sportsnet tells us that Devon’s homer was his 10th of the year and that gives us 10 Jays with 10 or more homers (and no one with 20, at the moment). The ones with 10+ are Smoak, Hernandez, Solarte, Grichuk, Morales, Diaz, Granderson, Martin, Pillar and Devon.

The pen:

• Ryan Tepera, working with just a 1-run lead, give up a leadoff single in the 8th (ground ball to Russell Martin, I thought Martin should have been moving in on the play but he let the ball come to him and it was an infield single). A strikeout and a walk later and we were sweating. Another strikeout, but still sweating. And then a soft fly in front of Billy McKinney and he made a very nice sliding catch.
• Joe Biagini came in for the 9th with a 6 run lead and struck out the side.

Jamie Campbell said that’s our third sweep of the O’s at Rogers, 10-0 against them here. I know the O’s aren’t good, but that’s still impressive.

Jays of the Day: Pannone (.456 WPA), Morales (.250) and Tepera (.125).

Suckage: I’m giving one to Teoscar for that error. And Martin (-.082, plus not coming in on that grounder in the 8th).

We had 365 comments in the GameThread. I led us to victory.