Terrible game for the batters, Jays lose again to Rays

Blue Jays 0 Rays 5

Through the first 8 innings we managed just one hit (a Randal Grichuk triple which should have been caught). That was our only base runner, until a Danny Jansen walk in the ninth. Beyond that, there were few hard hit balls, maybe 2 or 3 all game. We only had 5 fly outs. And there were the 13 strikeouts.

In the ninth, Jansen walked, Anthony Alford singled and Bo Bichette walked to load the bases with no outs. But we managed to avoid scoring. Teoscar popped out (with a totally unfair called strike on a swing that wasn’t close to being a swing). Grichuk struck out. And Vlad flied out to medium left to end the game.

The bats have been in a coma for the last few weeks. For a little while there the young guys seemed to give the time a spark but that’s ended.

Being fair, Bill Miller didn’t seem to care if a ball was over the plate, he figured if it didn’t bounce more than twice it must have been a strike. When Charlie Montoyo gets tossed for complaining about the strike zone you know it must be bad (though that might have been a mistake by Miller, it seemed like it was Teoscar Hernandez who was yelling from the bench).

Teoscar was 0 for 4 with 3 strikeouts (he seemed to get the worst of Miller’s calls). Bo 0 for 3, 2 k, 1 walk. Vlad 0 for 4, 2 k. Tellez 0 for 3, 2 k. Drury 0 for 3, k. Davis, 0 for 3. Jansen 0 for 2, walk. Grichuk 1 for 4, 2 k. Alford 1 for 3, k.

Clay Buchholtz looked pretty good. 6 innings, 7 hits, 4 runs, 3 earned, no walks and 3 strikeouts. He was hurt by some lackadaisical defense.

There was a fly ball that landed in front of Jonathan Davis that Davis...played carefully would be the polite way of saying it. Teoscar showed no urgency to get a ball back into the infield, on another hit, allowing the runner from second to score easy. There was a Jansen passed ball that cost us a run. And a Drury error at second.

The highlight play was a catch by Anthony Alford on a ball that was foul, near the stands and Alford went hard for the ball and made a very good catch. He was going so fast he couldn’t stop himself before running into the wall.

And Jansen threw out a base stealer (with a nice tag from Vlad at second base, because of the shift).

Thomas Pannone pitched a good inning. Justin gave up an unearned run in his inning. He did give up a couple of hits, but it was Drury’s error to start the inning that came around to score.

No Jays of the Day.

Suckage: Buchholz (-.196 WPA) and everyone in the batting order.

We had 427 comments in the game thread. DangYouToHeck led us to bitter defeat.