Espinal hits 3-run double, Jays beat Mets

Mets 3 Blue Jays 7

I’m still not a fan of the 3-batter rule for relievers, but I like it when we benefit.

In our 5-run sixth inning, the Mets brought Brad Brach in to pitch and he walked three batters. The Mets took him out and brought in Jared Hughes. Hughes walked Jonathan Villar to bring in a run, got Travis Shaw to strikeout and then gave up a bases-clearing double to Santiago Espinal. Danny Jansen followed with a single just over the drawn in infield, giving us five runs. Cavan Biggio kept up the fun with a double (misread by center fielder Brandon Nimmo, who took a step in, surprising me because I thought Biggio crushed it. Sure enough, it was well over Nimmo’s head). It didn’t cost the Mets, we didn’t score the runners.

We scored 2 in the second inning on a Lourdes Gurriel home run.

The Jays only had 7 hits, but with the 6 walks, mostly nice grouped in those two innings, seven was enough.

Hyun Jin Ryu didn’t have the easiest of days. He gave up 8 hits in his 6 innings (with no walks) and 7 strikeouts. He had base runners in each of the first four innings, but fought his way out, with the help of some nice fielding (and timely strikeouts). We had a nicely turned double play in the second and a terrific diving catch from Lourdes Gurriel in the first.

Ryu did go 3-up, 3-down in the fifth and sixth innings. He likely could have gone one more inning (he left the game with 92 pitches), but with just 2 weeks left in the season, we might as well let him stay well rested.

Thomas Hatch pitched a nice seventh but had troubles in the eighth. giving up 3 straight singles to start the inning.

A.J. Cole took over and got a run-scoring ground out (nice throw by Vlad to second base with runner Todd Frazier trying to get in the way). The next batter lined one hard up the middle but Villar made his best defensive play as a Blue Jay, with a diving catch. Just a great play. Another ground ball got Cole out of the inning. It helps to have good defense you behind you.

Rafael Dolis pitched the ninth, giving up a couple of walks, but getting through it without a run scoring.

Jays of the Day: Ryu (.280 WPA, should be shared with his defense) and Gurriel (.198, plus the catch).

No Suckage Jays. Bo had the low mark at -.065 for an 0 for 4.

Tomorrow is a rare off-day.

We had 418 comments in the GameThread. EMK19 led us to victory. I missed out on most of the early innings of the GameThread because of the world’s most boring Zoom meeting. I’m not doing Zoom meetings anymore.