A rare blown save, Jays lose to Red Sox

Red Sox 8 Blue Jays 7

That one hurt. Our third fourth blown save of the season. That only two three teams that have fewer (A’s (3), Cleveland (2) and the Yankees (1)) doesn’t seem to help at the moment. The Red Sox have had 7, but I really wish they had picked up number 8 tonight.

After a nice quick, seven-pitch first inning, Steven Matz got the first two out of the second and then: Single, single, home run (Hunter Renfroe), double, single, single, single, walk. And five runs in. And it wasn’t like Matz was pitching all that bad. It just seemed the Red Sox hit everything.

Other than that one inning, Matz was terrific. In total 6 innings, 10 hits, 5 earned, 2 walks, 4 strikeouts. 6 of the hits came with 2 outs in the second.

Tyler Chatwood pitched a very nice seventh inning.

Jordan Romano did the same in the eighth.

But the ninth didn’t go as well. Rafael Dolis gave up two very soft singles to start the inning, tough luck on those. And then a wild pitch (the second wild pitch of the season with Danny Jansen catching). The wild pitch hurt because he was followed by a ground out that scored one. Without the wild pitch that might have been a double play. But it wasn’t Danny’s fault at all. And then a J.D. Martinez home run. Another single and an intentional walk made things that much worse, but they finally got out of the inning.

His first blown save of the season and second in his time with the Blue Jays couldn’t come at a worse time. Dolis is recently off the IL, his first game back was Tuesday.

I would have rather had Chatwood go two, or for that matter Romano, but this is the way we have been doing things, and it has been working. Dolis has been very good this year, but tonight wasn’t his night.

Offensively, we scored:

• Two in the first: Back-to-back doubles from Bo and Vlad. Then a Teoscar walk, before a Randal Grichuk double. We had runners at second and third with one out, but Biggio struck out, and Espinal lined out.
• One in the third: Two outs single from Semien and Bo’s second double of the game.
• Two in the first: Semien led off with a walk. An out later, Vlad singled. An Rafaek Devers error scored Semien. And a Biggio single scored Vlad.
• Two in the sixth: Danny Jansen led off with what was called a double and error, but in my mind, it was his second career triple. Jonathan Davis singled him home. A Bichette walk and a Red Sox error loaded the bases. Grichuk singled in another run.

We had a shot in the ninth. After strikeouts to Grichuk and Biggio, Rowdy Tellez had a very good at-bat, taking a walk. And Jansen went to a few count before striking out.

Jays of the Day: Bo (.126 WPA) and Teoscar (.103).

Suckage: Dolis (-.713), Matz (-.190), and Espinal (-.149, having a very rough night with the bat, 0 for 4, with a strikeout).

Tomorrow we have the Rays coming to Dunedin.

We had 866 comments in the GameThread. DangYouToHeck led us to crushing defeat.