Team Grich got some revenge on Team Bo in today’s 6 inning intra-squad match-up, winning 5-0 behind an excellent performance by a collection of relievers. Team Bo retains a 2-1 lead in the best of 5 series. Tonight’s game was almost an hour shorter than last nights, and outside two half innings the pitchers were more or less in control.
Pitching Performances
- Jordan Romano, Ty Tice, Travis Bergen, AJ Cole, Bryan Baker, and Jake Petricka pitched a combined no hitter for Team Grich, striking out 8 members of Team Bo while issuing only two walks. Romano looked particularly impressive, striking out all three batters he faced. His breaking ball looked sharp, and while there was no gun his fastball seemed to get on top of hitters pretty quickly. Cole also looked very good, using his breaking ball in the zone for called strikes and down for swings and misses. Tice and Bergen both looked like they had pretty good stuff, but battled their command a little, while Baker and Petricka were fine but didn’t look particularly dominant.
- Taking the mound for Team Bo, Anthony Kay had an up and down night. He had a scary moment in the first, taking a Joe Panik line drive comebacker off the back of his right shoulder. It looked like a glancing blow, and it actually turned into an assist as the ball bounced to Reuben Tejada, who was able to throw Panik out at first. He was strong in the second and third, but Vladimir Guerrero opened the fourth by reaching out and poking a soft line drive single to left. Lourdes Gurriel jr badly misread the hop off the turf and let the ball bounce over his head, moving Vlad to 2nd. By this point, Gurriel should really have a feel for how the turf at Rogers Center plays. Randal Grichuk made the error irrelevant by smashing a line drive home run over the right field wall on the next pitch. Joe Panik laced the pitch after that to right for a double. Panik would come around to score on a ground ball and a sac fly, and Kay ended the inning by getting Anthony Alford to fly out to the wall. After mostly looking strong and avoiding getting squared up for three innings, Kay gave up four very hard hit balls in the fourth.
- Justin Miller relieved Kay in the fifth. He allowed a ground ball single to Santiago Espinal and then got himself behind 3-0 to Cavan Biggio before serving up a meatball that Biggio deposited in the right field seats. I’d forgotten how awkward Miller’s deliver looks. He freezes for a second at the top of his leg kick before dropping and then kind of popping up again when he drives forward to the plate. His breaking ball did look pretty good, as he was able to use it to get two strikeouts and make Andy Burns, hitting for Guerrero, flail pretty badly.
- Brian Moran finished things off for Team Bo with a clean sixth including to strikeouts. His sidearm lefty delivery made Kevin Smith, Reece McGuire, and Billy McKinney look pretty uncomfortable.
Hitting Performances
- Grichuk deserves the first star. He battled Kay in the first to draw a walk and homered off him in the fourth before striking out his third time up.
- Biggio hit the other home run of the night off Miller in the top of the fifth. He struggled against Kay, though, striking out in the first and lining out softly in the third.
- Guerrero had a pair of hits, a ground ball single to right and the soft liner to left that lead to Gurriel’s error. He also stole a base in the first on a ball in the dirt and advanced to third on a throwing error by Danny Jansen. Maybe defences are just intimidated by his speed?
- Panik lined a double off Kay.
- Espinal hit a ground ball single and made a couple pretty nice plays from shortstop, including good throws on soft grounders to get the final two outs.
- Anthony Alford didn’t reach base, but he did hit a couple balls pretty well, including one to the center field wall that elicited the Forrest Wall TV dive in the header of this article.
- Billy McKinney also hit two balls hard, and made a nice catch to pull a Travis Shaw fly back out of the seats down the right field line.
- Reece McGuire and Derek Fisher failed to reach base and mostly looked bad doing it.
- Danny Jansen earns the star for team Bo, half because he was one of two players to reach for his team, and half because he announced today that he’s gotten engaged. Congrats Danny.
- Travis Shaw also managed to walk and avoid total shame.
- Bo Bichette, Reuben Tejada, Rowdy Tellez, Patrick Kivlehan, Forrest Wall and Teoscar Hernandez collectively failed to reach base. Lourdes Gurriel jr did the same, and threw in a lazy error in the field. Not a great effort, considering only one of the pitchers they faced seems like a lock to make the MLB roster.
Tomorrow night’s game will feature Nate Pearson taking on Ryan Borucki. That’ll be an interesting match-up, but unfortunately it isn’t scheduled to be televised. The Jays aren’t currently scheduled to be on TV again until Tuesday at 7:30 Eastern, when they begin their final tune up series against the Red Sox at Fenway Park.