Stroman, Drury do their Duty, Jays walk off A’s

Vlad & the Blue Jays: 4 Athletics: 2

Marcus Stroman is type of player who just thrives off a big game with a plethora of added attention from Vlad’s call up. When you add in his terrific start against the same team a week ago, it’s no surprise that he was absolutely dominant again tonight. Stroman pitched 7 scoreless innings of one hit ball, allowing only two walks and striking out seven. In the first three innings, Stroman retired nine straight, and made nifty catch on a come-backer to the mound in the 3rd.

Stroman gave up a lone single to Marcus Semien in the fourth, but retired the next three batters along with a little defensive help from his new third baseman. Vlad Jr made his first nifty defensive play on a Stephen Piscotty slow chopper, fielding the ball cleanly and making a nice throw to 1st. Thank goodness for that extra few weeks of development time in the minors.

Stroman walked Kendrys Morales to lead off the 5th, and Semien in the 6th but that was all. It was another superb outing from him on a night where the expectations from over 28,000 fans were ridiculously high.

Joe Biagini came in to the game in the 8th, and gave up a one out single to Laureano. Robbie Grossman pinch hit as the tying run, and tied up the game when he hit a homer to right center field. Biagini gave up another single to Semien and then got Matt Chapman to pop out before handing the ball over to Ryan Tepera. Tepera struck out Piscotty to end the inning.

Ken Giles pitched the ninth in a tie game, and gave up an almost home run to Chad Pinder, but it bounced off the top of the wall and stayed as a double. He gets the win.

On the offense side, the Jays had 8 hits, 2 homers, and stranded 10 runners. Eric Sogard in particular had a great night (two hits and a walk, including the home run).

Sogard, clearly fueled with Vlad Jr hype energy, launched a lead off homer 390 feet to right field (the first of his career), giving the Jays a quick 1-0 lead. Mike Fiers retired the next three batters to delay Vlad Jr’s first major league at bat until the next inning.

Vlad Jr led off the 2nd inning to a chorus of “Let’s go Vladdy” chants, and hit a 106.8 MPH grounder, the hardest hit ball of the night, to Morales for an out.

The Jays added another run in the 3rd. Danny Jansen had a one out base hit that Matt Chapman couldn’t come up with, Eric Sogard flew out and Justin Smoak hit a grounder through the shift. Randal Grichuk hit a ball into shallow center that dropped right in front of Ramón Laureano, and Jansen, who was already running with two outs, scored.

In Vlad Jr’s second at bat, he launched a deep fly to left field on a splitter that everyone thought was gone (including me, fully blowing my pretending to be doing work while at work cover), but it was nabbed a couple feet shy by Chad Pinder.

Vlad Jr’s third at bat came in the sixth, and he hit a high fly ball to right field. The Jays managed only one single and one walk in the 7th and 8th.

Vlad Jr also led off in the bottom of the ninth, and hit a two strike double just down the first base line. Billy McKinney sac bunted the pinch runner in Alen Hanson over to 3rd, and Teoscar Hernandez lined one directly at Profar (who had already made a nice play on a Drury line drive earlier in the game) for an unlucky out.

Drury hit the first pitch he saw from Yusmeiro Petit out to right center for a walk-off win. What a way to welcome Vlad Jr to the majors.

CONTEST WINNER

We also held a Vlad Jr call up prediction contest date, and both wayler and Seeforman correctly guessed April 26th. For a tie-breaker, I asked how many total bases Vlad would reach safely on his call up day, including advances from another player’s at bat. Vlad was pinch ran for, but technically he had two on the double, then would have added another two as the winning run. Wayler guessed 4 and Seeforman guessed 8, so congratulations to Wayler for getting it spot on! Wayler requested diet cheese doodles, so *hands out diet cheese doodles and Internet points*

Jays of the Day: Stroman (+.412 WPA), Drury (.323), Sogard (.144) and Giles (.139)

Suckage: Biagini (-.307), Hernandez (-.198) and Tellez (-.100)

h/t to FlipDown Shades for the recap title inspiration

We had 851 comments in the GameThread. Belisarius led us to Vlad Jr Debut Night victory. Congrats!

Tomorrow we have a rematch of last Sunday’s game with Aaron Sanchez facing Brett Anderson at 3:07 ET.