Hernandez hits 2 home runs, and Ryu was great, Jays beat Braves

Blue Jays 4 Braves 1

That was one heck of a start for Hyun Jin Ryu.

He went 7 innings, allowed just 5 hits, 1 walk with 6 strikeouts. The run against him was a William Contreras home run, his second career home run. For a few minutes there, it looked like that might be the only run of the game.

Ryu was so good. He is a pleasure to watch.

Tyler Chatwood was also great in the eighth inning getting Ronald Acuna to fly out and strikeouts to Freddie Freeman and Marcell Ozuna. Chatwood has to be in the conversation for the biggest pleasant surprise of the young season.

AJ Cole pitched the ninth with the three-run lead. He gave up a walk, and spent way too long between pitches, but pitched a scoreless inning.

On offense? We only had 5 hits, but 2 of them were Teoscar Hernandez home runs. Teoscar put us ahead with a solo homer in the seventh and added 2 runs to our lead with a home run in the ninth.

Our other run came in the sixth. Cavan Biggio started the winning off with a walk, an out later stole second on the pitch that struck out Ryu (a strange time to steal) and then scored on Marcus Semien’s double.

We had two hits each from Bo and Teoscar. Semien’s double was the other hit.

The batters had a surprisingly hard time with Max Fried, who gave up just 2 hits and 3 walks in 6 innings. He brought his ERA down from 8.44 to 6.55.

The plate umpire was having a hard night. pitches 2 or 3 inches off the inside of the plate could be strikes, but pitches 2 or 3 inches up from the bottom of the strike zone could be balls. It was irritating.

Also irritating? Top of the eighth, Ryu’s spot in the batting order coming up and we pintch hit with Santiago Espinal. Yes, he was hitting .320, but I think we can all agree that 25 at bats is a small sample. Rowdy Tellez has hit lefties well and could run into a pinch and get us, what would have been, an important run at that time in the game.

Jays of the Day: Ryu (.304 WPA), Chatwood (.142), Hernandez (.303), Semien (.103).

Suckage: Vlad (-.112, 0 for 4) and Jansen (-.096, 0 for 3, 2 k).

Tomorrow’s game is an early one. 12:30 Eastern as we go for the sweep with Ross Stripling going against Charlie Morton.

We had 553 comments in the GameThread. EMK19 led us to victory.