Quick Spring Recap: Jays beat Phillies

Phillies 1 Blue Jays 4

Well, the fixed camera feed was better than nothing. The view over the shoulder of the pitcher was pretty good, the tiny screen to follow balls in play wasn’t so good. I wish they could find a way to give us ballpark audio. Having the sound of the bat hitting the ball would help. The plan is that we will get this for all spring home games.

But again, massively better than nothing. This looks like a Blue Jays solution to a problem, not Sportsnet, which suggests, to me, some inter-company disagreement. Sportsnet needs some executives who actually like sports, and understand that giving us spring games builds the excitement for the season.

Or at least, fire any executive who thinks poker should be on a sports channel.

Anyway, the game:

Steven Matz looked very good. He pitched 3 innings, allowed just 1 hit, and struck out 3. He kept pumping in strikes. DON’T READ MUCH IN ONE SPRING START. But.....he looked really good to me. He threw 43 pitches, with 31 strikes.

• Tyler Chatwood, Francisco Liriano, Rafael Dolis, and David Phelps each threw a clean inning.
• Ryan Borucki gave up 2 hits and a run but had 2 strikeouts. He was also throwing harder than last year, topping out at 97.4. Things like that both excite me and worry me. I’m worried he’ll hurt his arm, but I also think he’ll be unhittable.
• Jordan Romano allowed a hit and a walk, around his 3 strikeouts. He topped out at 98.7.

Hitters:

We only had 1 extra-base hit, Marcus Semien had a double, in three at-bats. He’s hitting .286 for spring. Others:

• Bo Bichette: 1 for 2. .222.
• Teoscar Hernandez: 0 for 2, walk and steal. .250.
• Vlad: Walk, Sac Fly, 0 for 1. .286
• Lourdes Gurriel: 1 for 2. .417.
• Randal Grichuk: 0 for 3, 1 k. .143.
• Danny Jansen: 0 for 1, walk. .167.
• Alejandro Kirk: 1 for 1. .400.
• Chavez Young: 1 for 2, infield hit. The guy can run. .222.
• Tyler White: 1 for 2. .111.
• Forrest Wall: 0 for 3, k. He was a late add to the lineup, George Springer (and Cavan Biggio) had ‘abdominal tightness’. .300.
• Jordan Groshans: 0 for 1, hard line drive. .000.

Of note: Guerrero played third and Gurriel played first. Neither made an error, but the ‘field view’ window was too small to get a feel for how they look.

Tomorrow the Jays travel to Sarasota to play the Orioles, a game that doesn’t appear to be on MLB.tv or Audio.