Pannone has a rough start, Jays lose

Blue Jays 5 Rangers 8

The Jays half of the fourth inning had two interesting plays:

• With Billy McKinney on first base, after a single, and one out, Socartes Brito bounced one to first that Rangers first baseman Logan Forsythe picked up but decided not to make a play. He could have walked to first, but he just stood there. But we can’t call it an error, even though it was clearly an error. Baseball has some stupid scoring traditions. Single for Brito.
• Next batter, Eric Sogard lines one to left center, CFer Joey Gallo dives at it, missing it, turning a single into a triple and letting two runs score. Again, clearly an error, but called a triple. Jays scored 3 in the inning. I was surprised to see Gallo playing CF, but I see he’s played 6 games there this year.

We started the inning down 8 to 2 and we finished it 8-5 through little fault of our own. It is good to see that other teams do stupid stuff sometimes.

Course next inning Rowdy Tellez lines a single up the middle and tried to stretch it to a double, getting himself thrown out very easily. Stupid baseball when you are down by three.

Thomas Pannone had a terrible time of it. His first inning was good, other than a Nomar Mazara homer, but it went downhill quickly.

In the second inning he walked the bases loaded with one out and then gave up a triple. Add in a single, and the Rangers had a 4 run inning.

A couple more singles in the 3rd inning and he was out of the game. In all 2.1, 5 hits, 7 earned, 3 walks, 1 k. An outing like that will ruin a guy’s ERA. He came into the game with a 5.40 ERA and left with a 8.05 ERA. That’s three bad outings in a row for Thomas. He gave up 5 runs in his last 2 relief appearances.

Derek Law got into his first game as a Blue Jay. He went 1.2 allowed 1 hits, 2 walks with 1 strikeout, allowing both his inherited runners to score.

Sam Gaviglio pitched 2 perfect innings. I thought they should have sent him out for a 3rd inning.

Elvis Luciano pitched the 7th and 8th inning, giving up a single and 2 walks.

We had some offense today. 9 hits and 4 walks. Billy McKinney and Tellez had 2 hits each. Every other starter had a hit except for Justin Smoak and Randal Grichuk (Randal had a walk). And the 5 runs is the most we’ve scored in a game since April 28th.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was 1 for 3 with a walk.

We also had a number of hard hit balls that found gloves.

Jays of the Day: Sogard had the number (.102 WPA, for the ‘triple’ and 2 walks).

Suckage: Pannonie (-.361) and Brito (-.092, 1 for 4, his hit was his softest hit ball of the game).

We had 600 comments in the GameThread. I led us to defeat. Yay, I guess.