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Ah, the sweet smell of an all round good team victory. It smells like newly washed fur of a red panda...glorious!
With the 5-0 win. Toronto handed Baltimore their 107th loss of the season- and couldn't happen to a nicer team (or a grumpier manager).
We had excellent defence including a near triple play, some excellent hitting, and DINGERZ from Jansen, Pillar and Diaz (who is quietly making me want to give up on Tulo altogether).
Ryan Borucki threw a gem of a game and in doing so, recorded his 10th quality start to get the win, tying Marco Estrada for most by a Jays pitcher this season.
It was his third strong effort in a row and he now has a 3.86 ERA over his first 15 major-league outings, which puts him eighth among rookie starters with at least 70 innings pitched.
Ok so the OrioLOLes are MLB’s worst team, but their offence scored five runs or more in three of the four games preceding this series. Plus, they tagged Borucki for five runs on eight hits only three weeks ago.
But Ryan got the form book, ripped it in pieces and set fire to it with his performance yesterday. This is what the strike zone looks like when Borucki has everything working:
Look at its majesty
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Ryan threw 64% of his pitches for strikes while inducing 14 groundballs versus only 6 in the air.
Every single Orioles hitter put at least one ball in play on the ground. All three of Baltimore’s hits were singles, and one of them came off John Andreoli’s bat at only 67-mph with an 8% hit probability.
With his recent performances its fair to say that he’s a shoe in for the the Jays’ rotation next year, unless he gets bizarrely injured:
RYAN WATCH OUT FOR SPRINKLER HEADS!!!
No Sho Stro
As we know its very unlikely Marcus Stroman return to the mound this season, due to the blister on his right middle finger.
Stroman’s season has been a shambles right from the outset with spring training shoulder inflammation and then a lack of recovery time. This set the table for his failure of a season.
He eventually landed on the DL with a shoulder issue in May (where he had a 7.71 ERA!)and then he came back in late June to post a 2.98 ERA over his next seven starts. This was encouraging until the blister problems cropped up in August, making it difficult for him to go deep into starts.
In 19 starts spanning 102.1 innings, Stroman (likely) finishes with a 5.54 ERA, but the underlying numbers show he didn’t quite deserve that fate.
While he walked more and struck out fewer than he did in his breakout 2017 season, Stroman was the victim of a strand rate well below league average at just 60.5% and his 3.90 FIP is right in line with his career mark.
With a full winter of rest, here’s hoping he will bounce back next season. We need him to as the real Marcus Stroman has been a no-show this year.
Estrada back for 2019?
With GM Ross Atkins already pointing to pitching depth as the main priority in ghe free agency front, could we see Marco Estrada return as a stopgap until our younger rotation arms are fully ready? He would also come cheaper than the $13 million he’s earning this year.
In 133 innings, Chips has posted an ERA of 5.75, but he has a second half ERA of 7.89 over his last nine starts.
In other ball throwing news reliever Justin Shafer has been diagnosed with a Grade 1 flexor strain in his right elbow. Shafer tossed two innings of one-run ball in an 11-0 loss to the Yankees on Friday and later admitted to feeling discomfort. He will be shut down from throwing at least until Toronto returns home Thursday and will be re-evaluated at that time.
There has been some discussion recently of the Jays possible rebuild and where our farm system is positioned for that. Richard Griffin has a good piece on how the Jays FO is handling it all and what we can expect.
(Summary: we need strong stomachs and patience...)
Play of the Day
Ryan’s pitching was GOLD today. His fielding could be too:
Cycle of the Day
Christian Yelich becomes the fifth player to hit for the cycle twice in one season and the first to do it against the same team (Reds).