Biggio, Gurriel and Smoak homer, Jays Win

Padres 1 Blue Jays 10

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday’s game was awful. Today’s was a lot of fun.

The best parts about today, other than we won?

• Cavan Biggio got hit first MLB hit. And then he got his first MLB home run (just 404 feet) and just for the fun of it, he got his third MLB hit. His friends seemed happy for him. I’ll put the tweet showing Lourdes and Vlad showing their happiness at Cavan’s first home run, at the bottom of the post. Cavan, interviewed after the game, said his dad was happier for him than he was ever was for himself.
• Lourdes Gurriel went 4 for 4, with his 3rd home run in three games since coming back. I don’t think he liked Buffalo.
• Justin Smoak homered twice, giving him 5 in his last 5 games.
• Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had 3 hit, a double and 2 singles.

We had 17 hits. Eric Sogard and Randal Grichuk had 2 hits each. The only members of the lineup not to hit were Freddy Galvis and Danny Jansen.

Our pitchers did well too.

Marcus Stroman went 5 innings, allowed 5 hits, 1 earned, 1 walk with 2 strikeouts. He only threw 89 pitches, so we wondered why he came out of the game after just 5. Maybe he was hungover after last night’s Raptors win too? Charlie has a quicker trigger than I’d like, but then he is closer to the players than I am. I was hoping Marcus could go deep into the game and save the pen.

Daniel Hudson pitched a nice quick 6th inning. Then he gave up two bloop hits to start off the 7th and came out of the game. One was a fly that fell in front of Brandon Drury in right field. Drury played back on it, when I thought he had an easy enough play. The other a pop fly to short right that Lourdes almost got to, making a sliding effort but just missing it. I think they are playing the outfield too far back.

The ball bounced towards the stands and a fan grabbed it. The umpires put the runners on second and third, which I thought was right. Often umpires punish the home team, so I thought they might give the runner who started on first a run. But, even though it seemed like the umpires did the right thing, Charlie Montoyo asked for a review. It lasted way too long and didn’t change anything. I didn’t understand the review. It just seemed like a waste of time.

Joe Biagini came in and got a line drive drive up the midddle, right to Biggio at second. He stepped on the bag for the double play. A strikeout got us out of the inning. Joe gave up a couple of soft singles in the 8th but got out of that too.

Ken Giles pitched the 9th, because he hasn’t pitched in a few days, and had a quick inning.

Our pitchers gave up 10 hits, but just the one run, a Wil Myers home run off Stroman.

We had a couple of nice defensive plays too. Lourdes made a very nice play on a ball hit off the wall, grabbed it quick and made a very good throw to second getting the runner.

Drury made a very nice running catch on a foul ball that was right on the wall, a tough catch to make as you don’t want to run into the wall. That almost makes up for him playing too careful on the fly ball that fell in front of him.

Jays of the Day: Biggio (.188 WPA, with his Hall of Fame father watching), Gurriel (.177) and Stroman (.195). And I’m giving one to Smoak, even though he didn’t have the number, because I think if you hit two home runs you deserve a JoD.

No Suckage Jays. Galvis had the low mark at -.071.

We had 373 comments in the GameThread. Alan F. led us to victory. Nice job Alan.