Once again we don’t score for Marcus, Jays lose

Blue Jays 2 White Sox 4

Losing a game on a squeeze bunt. We’ve lost games in every possible way this season.

We got a nice start out of Marcus. 6 innings, 7 hits, 2 runs, 1 earned, 1 walk and 6 strikeouts. He had an unearned run in the first inning, because of an error by Freddy Galvis.

He gave up another run in the 4th inning when the White Sox scored on 3 singles. It would have been a lot worse but Billy McKinney made a great catch in left field, running face first into the fence, bouncing off, and making a quick throw back to the infield. It look like he might have been hurt on the play, and there was some blood around his mouth, but he stayed in the game. Must be a tough guy cause he hit that fence at full speed.

Once again we didn’t score much for Marcus. Freddy Galvis homered in the second inning. And we scored in the 6th inning. Eric Sogard led off with a walk. He “stole” second on a rather strange play. Vlad got to a full count and took a pitch low, Sogard was running on the play. The umpire made a late strike call, but Sogard had slowed up thinking it was ball four. Fortunately the throw from the catcher was short. Vlad had walked across the plate, thinking it was ball four and likely disrupted the throw, but since the catcher didn’t make contact with him it wasn’t called interference. An out later Sogard scored on an error by White Sox third baseman Yoan Moncada making a bad throw on an easy grounder from Randal Grichuk.

We got the leadoff batter on in the 8th, Danny Jansen took a walk. Eric Sogard bunted him to second. Vlad hit a fly ball just short of the track in left. And, after a Justin Smoak intentional walk (have the White Sox noticed how poor he’s been hitting?), Grichuk ground out.

We only had 2 hits on the day. Galvis had the home run and Drury had a single (and both of those hits were in the second inning.

Vlad was 0 for 4 with a strikeout.

Joe Biagini pitched the 7th and made it interesting. He had a ground ball hit right back to him, which he knocked down but couldn’t pick it up quick enough, so it was a leadoff single.

Next batter tried to bunt, until 2 strikes, then singled.

After a pop out, Jose Abreu hit a high chopper to third, Brandon Drury made a nice barehanded play, but his throw to first was a little late. But the umpire called him out. The White Sox would have challenged, but they used the challenge earlier on a foul tip at the plate for strike three. The batter, Welington Castillo said it hit him, but a replay showed it wasn’t that close. The review of that play cost them the chance to get a review in the 7th which they would have won.

My question was that even if you use your challenge earlier in the game, in the 7th and later you can ask the umpires to check a call and I can’t remember a time they said no. But today they said no. Which was luck for us.

Anyway, an intentional walk to load the bases and a strikeout got Biagini out of the inning and we were still tied.

Derek Law had his own troubles in the 8th. A 1-out walk was followed by a single giving the Sox runners on the corners. The next batter got down a squeeze bunt (on his third try) and the White Sox got the lead. Law tried to get the runner at home but it is a tough play to make, since we needed a tag out at the plate. And Jansen’s throw to first was just a bit late, so we didn’t get an out.

A wild pitch moved the runners to second and third.

Next batter Leury Garcia hit a medium fly to McKinney in left. Billy made a great throw and got the call at the plate. But this time the umpires did a review and overturned the call.

A strikeout ended the inning, but by then we were down by two.

Let’s give Marcus the Jay of the Day. He had a .088 WPA and he was quite good.

Suckage: Law (-.321), Vlad (-.161). McKinney had the number too (-.107) but he made that catch so I’m not giving him the honor. He already must have a headache. Really all the batters could get a Suckage award.

We had 643 comments in the GameThread. DangYouToHeck led us to dismal defeat. Do better next time.