A rather dismal effort, Jays lose to Braves.

Blue Jays 2 Braves 7

I know we are all about the pitching has to be better, but we ought to be scoring more than 2 runs against a pitcher like Mike Foltynewicz.

On the pitching side:

• Wlimer Font didn’t have a good time of it as the opener. He game up four hits in a row to start the game: Triple, single, double and single. Amazingly enough that only added up to two runs. Wilmer got lucky when Matt Joyce hit a line drive right at Rowdy Tellez and Rowdy was able to double off Josh Donaldson. Rowdy was smart and tagged the bag instead of trying to tag the moving runner.
• T.J. Zeuch pitched three very good innings and one bad one in his first game in the MLB. For three innings he was getting ground ball. In the fifth inning he got a ground out, gave up a walk, got a fly out, gave up another walk. Then a Josh Donaldson double scored both walks. It might have been smarter to pitch around Josh. I thought Zeuch looked pretty good. He’s not the first pitcher to get hit hard by Donaldson.
• Jordan Romano pitched a nice quick sixth.
• Derek Law gave up a walk in his scoreless seventh. He gave up a single to start the eighth and
• Tim Mayza came in. Mayza couldn’t find the strike zone, walking two to load the bases and then Tyler Flowers lined one to deep center. Teoscar Hernandez got back to the ball, but whiffed on the catch. It wasn’t an easy play, but a MLB center fielder should make it. Three runs scored.
• Sam Gaviglio came in to finish the inning but by then the game was out of reach.

We only had six hits on the day. Derek Fisher had two of them. Bo Bichette, Teoscar, Billy McKinney and Tellez had a hit each. Rowdy crushed a solo homer, it went also 400 feet.

Beyond that there wasn’t much fun to be had on offense.

Beau Taylor played his first game with the Blue Jays. He went 0 for 2 with a strikeouts, but he looked decent behind the plate.

I’ve been on the fence about Teoscar’s defense in center field, but he had a bad night tonight. In the first inning, leadoff hitter Ronald Acuna hit one hard off the right field wall. Randal Grichuk got too close to the wall to play the ball off it (in his defense, the ball seemed to carry better than I thought it would), but the center fielder is supposed to be backing up all plays in the outfield. Teoscar didn’t take a step in the direction of the ball. Cavan Biggio was the one to get the ball, but by then it was a triple. Between that and the ball that should have been caught, in the seventh inning, he didn’t impress. With him hitting .220/.297/.449, I want him playing better defense. SABR Defensive Index has him slightly below average in center.

Maybe Alford could get a few games in center.

On the good defense side, Bo Bichette made a terrific play at short, going to his right, turning and making a perfect throw to first from deep in the hole.

Jay of the Day: Fisher (.098 WPA for his 2 for 3, walk and double). He had a really good day at the plate.

Suckage: Font (-.154), Grichuk (-.100, 0 for 4) and let’s give one to Teoscar and Mayza.

We had 266 comments in the GameThread. I led us to dismal defeat.