Lourdes Gurriel homers twice, Jays win

Royals 2 Blue Jays 6

It was nice to watch Sean Reid-Foley go out there and throw strikes. There’s never been a worry that his stuff wouldn’t play in the majors, the worry has been that he won’t throw enough strikes. Tonight he threw enough strikes. The boxscore says 67 pitches, 42 strikes. If he does that he’s a major league pitcher.

Reid-Foley went 5.1, allowed 5 hits, 2 earned, 1 walk with 3 strikeouts. He gave up a solo homer to Martin Maldonado in the 5th. Then in the 6th he gave up a 1-out single and double for the Royals second run and that it for his night. The Jays said they would limit him to 60-70 pitches. And did seem to be tiring. The Royals aren’t the greatest offensive team in the majors but Sean looked really good. I’m hoping he stays in the rotation the rest of the way.

It was the ‘all home run’ offense for the Jays today. We had:

• A 2-run homer from Lourdes Gurriel Jr. in the 6th inning. Vladimir Guerrero reached on a little pop fly that fell between the Royals infield and outfield. It was up in the air for so long, someone should have caught it, but there didn’t seem to be much urgency on the part of the Royals players to get to it.
• A solo homer from Eric Sogard (his 9th of the season, the guy only had 11 homers career before this season, in over 1700 PA) in the 7th.
• And a pair of homers in the 8th. A solo homer from Lourdes to start up the inning (before I realized the inning had started, I thought they were giving us game highlights). And a 2-run homer from Randal Grichuk (who seems to be working his way our of his season long slump). Cavan Biggio had walk and stole second between the homers.

We had 9 hits tonight, 4 of them homers.

Gurriel and Sogard had 2 hits each. Lourdes brought his multi-hit game game streak to 6. The only Blue Jay not to reach base was Teoscar Hernandez, who is having a rough time of it at the plate.

Our bullpen did the job tonight:

• David Phelps came in with 1 out and 1 on in the 6th and got 2 strikeouts. That’s the best he’s looked since coming off the IL.
• Joe Biagini started the 7th, and gave up 2 hits, getting 2 strikeouts, plus an intentional walk, and was pulled with the bases loaded and 2 out.
• Daniel Hudson came in and got a ground ball hit at Justin Smoak at first to get out of the inning. In the 8th he gave up a leadoff double (scaring us, since we only had a 1-run lead at the time), and then got three straight strikeouts. Pretty impressive.
• Ken Giles pitched the 9th, even though it wasn’t a save, and gave up a double but nothing else. Thank you Charlie for using him even if it wasn’t a save.

Jays of the Day: Hudson (.243 WPA), Gurriel (.273) and Sogard (.217). And let’s give Sean Reid-Foley an honorable mention. It’s nice to see a starting pitch not named Marcus have a good start.

No Suckage Awards. Biggio had the low mark at -.072.

We had 459 comments in the GameThread. Belisarius led us to the win. Great job.