Jays win first game of doubleheader

Blue Jay 4 Cleveland 1

Two highlights of this game:

• Ross Stripling looked very good for the second outing in a row. It really does look like the changes he and Walker made to his delivery are working. He went 5 innings (likely could have gone longer), allowing just 2 hits (one a Josh Naylor home run), 1 walk, and 3 strikeouts. He threw 67 pitches, 41 of them strikes.
• Cleveland’s defense was terrible. It was almost as bad as the official scorer, who didn’t give Cleveland a single error even though they made at least four.

The controversial move of the game was taking Stripling out after the fifth inning. I likely would have had him start the sixth, but I would have had someone warming. Two-run lead, and he did seem to be tiring a bit. But only three batters reached base.

Rafael Dolis did pitch a good sixth inning, giving up a single but getting 3 medium flyouts.

Offensively, we did enough but really should have scored more runs. We scored:

• One in the third: Joe Panik singled (the popup should have been caught) and moved to second on a wild pitch. Reese McGuire bunted (I’d love us to put the sac bunt into the back of the closet where it belongs). Semien ground one to third, but Jose Ramiez misplayed it, called a single, but was an error) A Bo Bichette ground out scored Panik (it was an easy double-play ball, but the throw from second to first was wide and Bo was safe, yes, should have been an error, but official scorers subscribe to the idea that you can’t do anything bad enough on a double-play ball for it to be called an error).
• Two in the fourth: Teoscar Hernandez and Rowdy Tellez each homered.
• One in the seventh: Panik led off with a single again. Reese McGuire doubled moving pinch-runner Santiago Espinal to third (nice move putting in the pinch-runner). Marcus Semien walked to load the bases. After Bo chased to strikeout, Vlad Guerrero hit a deep fly to center to score Espinal. Teoscar also chased a very high pitch, to end the inning.

We should have scored more. Semien doubled to start the game (another popup that should have been caught), but we couldn’t move him up. Semien doubled again, with one out, in the fifth but we again didn’t score him. Grichuk doubled with one out in the sixth and well you know.

In all, we had 10 hits, 2 homers, 4 doubles. Semien had 3 hits, 2 doubles, and a walk, but didn’t score. Tellez and Panik each had 2 hits. Panik is 6 for 7 in the two games in Cleveland. I know it is likely Espinal will start in the second game today, but I’d be wanting to keep Panik out there.

We had 0 fors from Bo (who had a walk and an RBI), Vlad (who had an RBI), and Lourdes.

Jays of the Day: Stripling (.243 WPA), Semien (.112), Rowdy (.099), Dolis (.094) and Panik (.086).

Suckage: Lourdes had the number (-.094) but he made some nice catches in left, so let’s let him off the hook).

We had 524 comments in the GameThread. EMK led us to victory. Great job.