Bo Bichette hits 2 homers, but Jays lose

Blue Jays 4 Rays 6

The highlight of the game turned out to be the first at bat of the game. Bo Bichette saw 12 pitches, fouling off 9, before he hit a home run on number 13. I figured things were going to go well when Cavan Biggio comes up second and the first pitch he sees is the pitchers’ 14th of the game. But we didn’t do much offensively after that.

Bo hit his second home run in the seventh inning, this one a 2-run shot, which tied the game. Unfortunately the tied didn’t last long. He was most of our offense.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a 2-out triple, with 2 out in the first, getting into third with a pretty nice swim move, though he shouldn’t have tried for third in the second inning, but we weren’t able to score him.

Our other run came in the sixth inning. Cavan Biggio was hit by pitch, stole second and scored on Vlad’s single.

We had a chance in the ninth. Reese McGuire had a 1-out double, bring the tying run to the plate. Derek Fisher walked, bringing up Bo. Bo hit what should have been a game ended double play, but an booted ball kept the game going. Cavan came up, and hit a deep fly, Rays pitcher Emilio Pagan thought it was gone, but Cavan was just a little under it.

We had 8 hits. McGuire had 3. Bo and Vlad (he also had a walk) had 2 each. Teoscar had our other hit, he also had 3 strikeouts.

Defense cost us again:

• In the fourth inning, with a runner on second, on an easy ground ball, Bo threw wide of first. Justin Smoak tried to make the tag, but the ball came out of his glove when he hit the runner’s helmet. It was ruled an error on Smoak, I disagree, I think the error was on the throw.
• A walk and an out later, pop fly fell between Vlad, Bo and Derek Fisher. It was up in the air long enough someone (Fisher) should have caught it. Two runs scored in the inning, both unearned.
• In the sixth, Avisail Garcia lined one to center that Teoscar Hernandez played into to triple. A good center fielder would have made the catch. A lesser one would have kept it to a single or double. We are lucky it wasn’t an inside the park homer.
• Next batter hits a fly ball to medium left right to Fisher. Fisher took his eyes off it to check the runner on third, just before it hit his glove and bounced away. Just is hard to believe. Fisher, I think, was thinking about a throw home, but he had no chance to get the runner. I’d blame the stupid park but, this time, that wasn’t the issue. He didn’t lose it in the roof.

Trent Thornton was pretty good. 4.2 innings, 4 hits, 3 walks, 4 strikeouts. 1 earned run, 2 unearned.

He got into some trouble in the fifth inning. A one-out double and a phantom hit batter put two on. An out and a walk later the bases were loaded. I figured Charlie would take him out of the game but he decided to leave him in (not a bad idea, let him try to pitch out of trouble). Trent got to a full count, but Travis d’Arnaud fouled off 3 pitches and then walked in a run.

Brock Stewart got the last out of the inning. Next inning Brock was the victim of the bad play in the outfield.

In the seventh inning, after Bo tied the game, Buddy Boshers gave up a leadoff homer to Austin Meadows to untie the game. One batter, one homer for Buddy.

Jason Adam came in and gave up a double off the right field wall. After a steal of third Adam fielded a grounder back to him and threw behind the runner at third. That started a 1-5-2-5-3-6 rundown that threatened to go off the rails on almost every throw.

Ryan Tepera had a tough time in the eight, giving up a run on a single then a Austin Meadows double. Meadows was 3 for 4 with a homer and an RBI double.

I feel like I should apologize to Pat Tabler. I don’t like him in the booth, but the 3-headed TV booth for this YouTube game was the worst I’ve ever heard. Rarely did the game get in the way of their stories. There was way too much old men ranting. We heard about the shift, framing, strikeouts, home runs....pretty much old man ranting bingo.

5,962 was the announced attendance, and I’m thinking that was an exaggeration.

Jays of the Day: Bichette (.257 WPA), Vlad (.177) and Reese (.099)

Suckage: Boshers (-.208), Thornton (-.180, hardly fair, that counts the bad play behind him against him), Grichuk (-.131) and Smoak (-.099) and Hernandez (-.091). And let’s give one to Fisher (-.038) for the error in the outfield.

We had 835 comments in the thread. DangYouToHeck led us to defeat in a tight race.