Panik drives in four, Jays beat Cleveland

Blue Jay 11 Cleveland 2 (6 innings)

That was an anti-climatic ending. Trent Thornton threw a pitch, in the bottom of the seventh, and kind of spun out on his landing foot, and the umpires called the game.

It didn’t seem to be raining as hard as earlier. But then it was a cold and rainy night. Snoopy would approve.

Anyway, the game....

Hyun Jin Ryu had a tough time in the first inning. Cold and windy, he seemed not to have a feel for his pitches. He gave up 3 hits and 2 walks in the inning, along with 2 runs. But, for the next four innings, he was great, just 1 more base runner. In 5 innings total, he gave up 4 hits, 2 earned, 2 walks, and 6 strikeouts. Considering the conditions, it was a pretty great start.

Trent Thornton pitched a perfect sixth and was starting the seventh when the game was called.

Our offense had a great time against Eli Morgan, making his first MLB start. Hardly fair for the young fellow, I hope he gets another stat. Actually, we hit well against all the pitchers Cleveland sent out.

We scored:

• 2 in the second: Randal Grichuk led off with a single. Amazingly, Lourdes Gurriel bunted, he might have been trying to bunt for a hit, but was awarded a sac bunt. Lourdes shouldn’t be bunting. Joe Panik singled. Santiago Espinal ground out, scoring Grichuk. Danny Jansen doubled home Panik.
• 4 in the third: Bo Bichette walked. An out later, Teoscar Hernandez lined a hard one to right, Teoscar tried to stretch it to a double and was thrown out. Grich doubled, scoring Bo. Lourdes doubled, scoring Randal. And, amazingly, Panik homered, to get a couple more RBI.
• 3 in the fifth: Teoscar again lined one to right, but didn’t try to stretch it to a double this time. Grichuk doubled again. Gurriel doubled home both of them. Panik singled home Lourdes, his fourth RBI of the game (and eighth of the season).
• 2 in the sixth: Vlad singled and went to second on a throwing error. After two outs, Gurriel walked, Panik singled to load the bases. And Espinal doubled, bringing home two runs (bringing him up to five on the season).

The Jays had 15 hits in the six innings. I guess they had a seventh-inning worth of at-bats. Panik had 4 hits, as Minor Leaguer said, 25% of his hits this season came tonight as well as half of his RBI. His batting average went from .211 to .262. He also had the lone home run of the night.

Grichuk had 3 hits. Lourdes and Teoscar had 2 each. Everyone else in the starting lineup had a hit, except for Bo, who was 0 for 4, with a walk. Danny Jansen reached 3 times with a double and two walks.

Jays of the Day: Panik (.202 WPA), Grichuk (.179), Gurriel (.109) and Jansen (.094).

No one got the Suckage number, Vlad had the low mark at -.073, but he made a few nice plays with the glove.

Our 6 thru 9 spots went 11 for 16 with 4 walks and 11 RBI.

Tomorrow is a 4:00 Eastern game. Ross Stripling gets the start, and hopefully shows us that the changes made before his last time out there are what is needed to make him a good starting pitcher. Sam Hentges (1-1, 6.20) starts for the Cleveland Baseball Club.

We had 808 comments in the shortened GameThread. And a few of them weren’t about the premier of my home province. I led us to a big victory (considering it looked like your average Alberta spring day in Cleveland, in is only fair that I led the way).