Grichuk hits a 9th inning Grand Slam, Jays win

Blue Jays 11 Orioles 10

That was an incredible ninth inning. We were down by four going into the inning, and I was expecting a quick inning.

But.....

After Teoscar Hernadez struck out, RowdyTellez walked, Richard Urena singled (pinch hitting) and McKinney walked to bring Bo Bichette to the plate as the tying run. Bo struck out chasing sliders off the plate. Yesterday’s hero Cavan Biggio followed, and he singled to bring the winning run to the plate.

Grichuk has been hitting homers lately. After getting to a 3-1 count Randal hit the grand slam home run. I don’t know why the Orioles left Miguel Castro out there for all of that.

After Randal’s heroics, Vlad reached on an error, went for second (when he really shouldn’t have) and was safe on another error, but he hurt himself at second. A rib injury of some sort is what we are told. Anthony Davis pinch ran and scored when Reese McGuire got his third hit of the game.

In the bottom of the ninth Derek Law got the save opportunity (since Ken Giles pitched yesterday) and decided to make us sweat. Law gave up a bunt single and a walk to start the inning. A long fly ball got my heart rate up, but McKinney caught it at the wall. A double off the right field wall brought in a run, and put the tying run at second and the winning run at third. A walk loaded the bases. But a pop out and ground out got him the save and saved me from throwing my computer across the room.

Offensively, we had 15 hits. We got back into the game, with a 3-run seventh, making it a 7-5 game. We had two more on, in the inning, but a Cavan Biggio fly out ended it.

Teoscar Hernandez hit a 3-run homer in that seventh inning. He had a 1 for 5 night with 3 strikeouts. We could have tied it that inning. After the homer McKinney walked and Bo Bichette singled, but Biggio hit a fly ball to right to end the inning.

Bichette had 3 hits, and 2 RBI. McGuire had 3 hits, 2 of them doubles, and 2 walks. Rowdy Tellez had a single and 3 walks (I guess he read my post saying he hadn’t taken a walk in the last two weeks).

Every spot in the batting order had a hit except for the ninth spot where Derek Fisher was 0 for 1 with a walk, Anthony Alford 0 for 1 and Billy McKinney took two walks.

Clay Buchholz had a rough night.

Buchholz went 3.2 innings, gave up 10 hits (5 doubles and 2 home runs), 7 earned, no walks and 4 strikeouts. His trouble came after two outs. In the first, after 2 outs, he gave up 3 straight doubles for 2 runs (it would have been worse but Derek Fisher reached over the left field wall to pull back a home run, a heck of a catch). He gave up 2 more runs in the second, after two outs. Then, after putting up a zero in the third, he gave up a homer, single and homer, after getting 2 outs in the fourth. And that was his night.

Maybe Clay had a little bit of bad luck, but he was hit hard.

We were down 7-1 when Buchholz left the game. But our pen was pretty good:

• Thomas Pannone: Finished the fourth inning and pitched the fifth, with out giving up a run.
• Elvis Luciano: Pitched a clean sixth.
• Sam Gaviglio: Allowed an unearned run in the seventh (Brandon Drury made an error at third).
• Brock Stewart: Allowed a run in the eighth (helped along by a poor tag attempt by Drury on a steal of third, the ball got there in time to get the out but Drury whiffed on the tag).

We need two more wins to save ourselves from a 100 loss season.

The game went 4:08, and in those middle innings it seemed longer.

Jays of the Day: Grichuk (.638 WPA) and McGuire (.170). And let’s give one to Tellez for the hit and 3 walks. Law had a .095, but since he aged me five years, no JoD for him.

Suckage: Buchholz (-.364) and let’s give one to Drury (-.072, plus the error and the missed tag).

We had 545 comments in the GameThread. I led us to victory.