Blue Jays 6 Rays 7 (10 innings)
Through 3 innings, things were going pretty great for Trent Thornton. He had to work a bit in the second inning. He gave up a 2-out walk and single and then got what should have been the inning ending ground out, but Freddy Galvis, instead of throwing to first for the easy out, went to second a little late to get Kevin Kiermaier. Since the play was in front of him, he should have known he wasn’t getting the out there, but he tried anyway. Trent got another ground ball to short and this one got us out of the inning.
In the fourth Trent went single, homer, out an amazing 3 times in a row (well actually 2 and 2/3s times). We went from 6-0 to 6-6 way too quickly. I really wanted Charlie to take Trent out before the third home run but Charlie, knowing he has a bullpen day coming tomorrow, hoped Trent could get that last out. He wouldn’t. Charlie took him out after the third two-run homer of the inning.
Sam Gaviglio got the last out of the fourth inning and then threw 3 scoreless innings. He did a terrific job when we needed it.
Derek Law pitched a scoreless eighth, giving out a walk and getting a strikeout. Law has a streak of 10 scoreless innings going.
Jason Adam pitched the ninth. With one out, Vlad went a long way to his right (from the shift) and tried to throw while moving away from first. He airmailed it over first, letting the runner go to second. It was rightly ruled a single and an error. He should have held onto it. Adam got a fly out and then intentionally walked Sogard to Avisail Garcia. After a long at bat, Adam got Garcia to strikeout.
The trouble with going to extras was that, sooner or later, Buddy Boshers was going to get into the game. And it happened in the tenth. Kevin Kiermaier started the inning with a hustle double. That was followed by a walk. A bad play on a bunt loaded the bases. Ball was bunted towards first, Drury fielded it, spun and threw to third, but wide. Vlad knocked it down but couldn’t catch it, and it was bases loaded, no outs. He went to a full count on Tommy Pham and got a strikeout. Then Buddy struck out Travis d’Araud to bring us to two outs and the bases loaded and Austin Meadows up.
He got to a 2-2 count and then threw a curve that bounced through Danny Jansen’s legs and Kiermaier scored on the wild pitch. I thought passed ball but either way it was game over. Buddy was a strike away from getting out of it.
If Drury could have made a good throw to third on the bunt, we could have been out of the inning.
On offense we scored:
- 3 in the second: With 2 outs and opener Andrew Kittredge having stuck out all 5 batters he faced to this point Randal Grichuk singled and stole second. Teoscar Hernandez took a walk. And then Brandon Drury homered. It seemed like Rays manager Kevin Cash went too long with his opener.
- 1 in the third: Bo Bichette singled (giving him a hit in each of his first nine MLB games, a new Jays record), leading off the inning, but then he was caught stealing. It turned out to be a bad thing because Cavan Biggio followed with a home run, his 10th of the season.
- 2 in the fourth: We had the help of three bad throws to get us our 2 runs. Grichuk reached on a Eric Sogard error. Hernandez hit what should have been an easy double play, but Sogard, again, threw wide of first, so the Rays just got one out. Drury singled. Then Danny Jansen ground one to third base and Rays third baseman Matt Durry threw wide of first, letting the two runners score.
That’s where our scoring ended, but we were up 6-0 so we thought we were in a good spot.
From the fifth through the eight, we only had one hit, a Bo Bichette double giving him a MLB record of 10 extra base hits in his first 9 games.
It looked like we were going to go ahead again in the top of the ninth. With 1 outs, Drury singled (after having fouled a pitch off a rather sensitive part of the male anatomy (and for the firemen out there, that isn’t the face)). Danny Jansen followed with a double. But Bo and Cavan each struck out and the go ahead run stayed at third base.
Jays of the Day: Gaviglio (.239 WPA, just a terrific job), Adam (.134), Law (.105)
Jansen (.255) and Drury (.298) each had the number too, but Jansen had to block that ball that went through his legs to loss the game. He knew the curve was coming, he knew it was going to be low. Be ready to get down to the ground. And Drury, if he could have put that throw on target, off that bunt, we might still be playing.
Suckage: Boshers (-.366, came so close to pitching out of that trouble. Really only the double to start the inning was his fault, and that was only a double because of Kiermaier’s speed. That was followed by an intentional walk, error and the ‘wild pitch’ that wasn’t really wild), Thornton (-.331), Gurriel (-.196, for an 0 for 5), Bichette (-.181, even though he was 2 for 5. Most of the negative was because of the strikeout in the ninth. Make contact and we could have had the go ahead win), Vlad (-.132, 0 for 5), Galvis (-.125, 0 for 5), Biggio (-.109, 1 for 4, walk and homer, but also the strikeout in the ninth).
Remember tomorrow is a day game.
We had 637 comments in the GameThread. I led us to crushing defeat.
# | Commenter | # Comments |
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1 | Tom Dakers | 95 |
2 | radivel | 56 |
3 | Alan F. | 53 |
4 | Link Floyd | 37 |
5 | Belisarius | 35 |
6 | FuriousG | 31 |
7 | Rhinos | 26 |
8 | fishedin | 26 |
9 | juddy96 | 24 |
10 | Kate Stanwick | 23 |
11 | westbromjayfan | 19 |
12 | vinnievanloewen | 19 |
13 | KrazeJeff | 18 |
14 | DangYouToHeck | 16 |
15 | BlueJayMatt | 16 |
16 | barraqudie | 15 |
17 | hpatton | 14 |
18 | Kevin D | 13 |
19 | bullgul | 11 |
20 | VladOfValhalla | 11 |
21 | NelsonL | 10 |
22 | Diamond_D86 | 10 |