Teoscar Hernandez hits two homers, but Jays lose

Blue Jays 3 Red Sox 4

Teoscar Hernandez had a great day, hitting 2 homers, taking 2 walks, and making a great throw from center to cut down a guy trying to get to second on a ball hit off the center field wall. Teoscar played the ball well and hit throw was right on target.

And Lourdes Gurriel hit a home run too.

We had five hits and three home runs. I guess if you aren’t getting many hits they might as well be home runs. Our only other hit was a Justin Smoak single. We did have 8 walks.

We had a change in the 8th. With one out, Randal Grichuk was hit by a pitch (thank goodness for elbow pads) and Cavan Biggio was walked. But Smoak struck out (called strike 3 on a pitch off the plate) and Freddy Galvis struck out (knowing he had to swing at everything, the plate ump was pissed off that our bench was on his case. Someone on the Jays bench way ejected from the game during his at bat).

We had a chance again in the ninth. Hernandez and Jansen both walked to start the inning. But Eric Sogard struck out. Vlad made pretty decent contact to the opposite field but it was caught. Gurriel singled, bringing home one and moving the tying run to second. Grichuk had a longish at bat, but finally struck out chasing.

I thought Aaron Sanchez was pitching pretty good, but he had a lot of soft contact fall for hits again him. He went 5 innings, allowed 8 hits, 4 earned, 1 walk with 4 strikeouts. He gave a home run to Rafael Devers that, I thought, was off the end of the bat, but it cleared the wall.

Nick Kingham pitch 2 scoreless innings, even though he gave up 4 hits and a walk.

Ken Giles pitched for the first time since before the All-Star break and looked like someone who hasn’t pitched in a long time. He gave up 2 hits and a walk, costing us a very big run.

It was an irritating loss...but considering we were out hit 14 to 5, it is amazing we only lost by one.

Jays of the Day: Teoscar (.358 WPA, 2 homers, 2 walks).

Suckage: Sanchez (-.168), Sogard (-.228, 0 for 4, walk, 2 k), Guerrero (.207, 0 for 5), Galvis (-.231, 0 for 4, k) and Grichuk (-.091, 0 for 3, walk, HBP, K).

We had 419 comments in the GameThread. DangYouToHeck lapped us. If we all worked as hard as he did, we could have won that one.