A disaster of a ninth inning, Jays lose

Rays 6 Blue Jays 4

There was a ninth-inning to forget. Totally frustrating.

Tyler Chatwood, who has been very good, started the ninth. He walked Ji-Man Choi, gave up a single to Brandon Lowe, and then a hard grounder that Vlad made a terrific play on, getting the runner at second. Another single made it a one-run game. Then came a line out that, thankfully, went right to Grichuk in right. Another walk, to load the bases ended Chatwood’s day.

I go believe that 99 times out of a 100 Chatwood would have been good in that spot. He just wasn’t today.

Tim Bergen came into a tough spot, bases loaded, tying run at third. Bergen’s first pitch was about two feet above the strike zone, the next one just 6 inches above. He went to a full count and after 3 fouled off pitches, walked the tying run in. And then walked in the go-ahead run. And walked in another run. Finally, a fly-out ended the inning, far too late.

Joe Siddal said that Chatwood shouldn’t have been pulled, but you only say that because you see what happened after. Chatwood had nothing. No one was going to guess that Bergen wouldn’t be able to throw strikes.

Few regular-season home runs have made me as happy as the one Randal Grichuk hit today. Little did I know what was to come.

Before Randal’s two-run homer in the eighth, we scored a run in the fourth on a Teoscar Hernandez home run and a run in the fifth on consecutive singled from Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero, and Teoscar Hernandez.

Other than that, there wasn’t much offense, even though we had 9 hits. Three from Teoscar, two from Grichuk. The bottom of the order had troubles, we had 0 for 3s from Santiago Espinal (he did have a walk), Danny Jansen, and Jonathan Davis.

Hyun Jin Ryu didn’t have his best stuff but he still managed to hold the Rays to two runs in 6.2 innings. He gave 8 hits including a solo homer to Francisco Mejia, with 1 walk and 7 strikeouts. Rafael Dolis came in for the last out of the seventh.

Jays of the Day: Teoscar (.302 WPA), Grichuk (.274), (.173 WPA) and Ryu (.125).

Suckage: Bergen (-.667), Chatwood (-.157), Jansen (-.098), and Davis (-.094)

Tomorrow we finish this mess of a series with the Rays. Another 1:00 start time.

We had 531 comments in the GameThread, ENK led us to crushing defeat.