Jays lose to A’s

Blue Jays 4 A’s 5

The second poor start in a row for Steven Matz. To be fair, last game he was unlucky on ground balls finding holes. Tonight it was hard-hit balls finding the seats. Matz went 5 innings, allowed 7 hits, 2 home runs, 1 walk, 6 strikeouts, and 5 earned runs. Before his last two starts he had a 2.31. Now it is 4.78.

He was, to say the least, unhappy when told he was out of the game. At 92 pitches, he had to know he was likely coming out, especially after giving up two runs in the fifth. I would have been ok in sending him out for the sixth, but it shouldn’t have been a surprise to him.

He gave up 3 runs in the second, on two doubles, and a home run all in a row. And 2 in the fifth, on a walk and a home run. He was helped out, in the fourth inning, by some very good defense. Stephan Piscotty drove one off the right-field wall, but Cavan Biggio made a nice barehand grab of the rebound off the wall and threw a strike to second to get Piscotty. Biggio also made a nice catch in the bottom of the ninth.

Travis Bergen got the next 5 outs, giving up two hits and a walk, but managing not to allow a run to score.

Tim Mayza got the last 4 outs, giving up 2 walks, and not looking entirely comfortable.

We only used two relievers, which feels like it should be a season-low. It is good we were able to rest the other 12 or so guys in the pen.

Offensively, we scored 3 in the third inning:

• Lourdes Gurriel led off with a single.
• Danny Jansen hit into a force play at second.
• Cavan lined a single to left.
• Bo Bichette ground a single up the middle, scoring Jansen.
• Vlad singled hard to right, too hard to score the runner from second, to load the bases.
• Teoscar Hernandez singled home two.

And 1 in the eighth:

• Vlad had a hard hit double over the right fielder.
• An out later Randal Grichuk singled Vlad to third.
• And he scored on a wild pitch.

We hoped for more, but Semien struck out and Joe Panik lined a soft one to center.

The Jays had 9 hits altogether. Vlad had 3, two singles, and a double. All three crushed, 110.4, 110.2, and 101.1 MPH.

In the ninth, we found out that there is more wrong with George Springer than a bit of fatigue when he didn’t pinch hit for Jansen.

It would be fair to mention that plate umpire Bill Miller had the odd bad call. Here is Bo Bichette’s strikeout in the 7th (he had a bad call on Biggio that inning too). One and two were called strikes.

Jays of the Day: Vlad (.232 WPA, he also made a couple of nice plays on defense) and Hernandez (.095).

Suckage: Matz (-.342), Panik (-.168 for an 0 for 4, he had a couple of hard-hit balls, including a line drive to the track in center), Jansen (-.125, 0 for 4), and Semien (-.091, 1 for 3, walk, but we needed a hit from him in the eighth).

Tomorrow is another late-game from Oakland.

We had 769 comments in the GameThread. Pretty good for a game that ended after midnight in the east. EMK19 led us to crushing defeat.