Bad night for the pitchers, Jays lose to Astros

Blue Jays 4 Astros 10

After a couple of fun games in a row, this one most definitely wasn’t.

Ross Stripling started and wasn’t good. He seemed to be just missing. He went just 3.2, allowed 6 hits, 3 earned, 3 walks, and 3 strikeouts. He gave up a two-run homer to Carlos Correa. As Joe Siddal mentioned, Danny Jansen sets up very early on the inside of the plate, and Correa didn’t look fooled by the inside fastball. There was lots of time for him to get a signal about where the pitch was, though likely not banging garbage lids. Siddal pointed out a few other at-bats that looked like the Astros knew what was coming.

After using just two relievers in the last two games, we used a bunch of guys.

• Tim Mayza came into the game with two out and one on in the fourth and got out of the inning. Then he gave up a single and a home run in the fifth to take us from a 3-2 game to a 5-2 game.
• And Ty Tice gave up two runs in his 1.1 innings of work.
• Trent Thornton got the last two outs of the seventh.
• Rafael Dolis started the eighth to get some work. He hadn’t pitched in a few days. But he was incredibly slow, gave up a hit and a walk, and then left the game with some sort of injury. We really can not afford to lose him too.
• Ryan Borucki finished things off, allowing both inherited runners to score and one of his own to get us to an even ten runs allowed.

Our offense was just as bad as the pitching—just six hits. But then three home runs. Bo Bichette and Danny Jansen (his second in the last two games) had solo homers. And Teoscar had a 2-run homer in the ninth, to mess with my recap. Danny almost has his average up to .100.

Vlad, Rowdy, and Lourdes had 0 fors. Vlad took a walk in the ninth, so he could score on Teoscar’s home run.

We did show some good defense. Lourdes made a terrific throw from fairly deep left field, totally flatfooted. He almost had the ball go over his head, getting a perfect strike to the plate, getting Myles Straw trying to score.

Vlad made 3 or 4 nice plays at first.

And Hernandez made a nice catch in the eighth inning.

He didn’t quite have the number, but I’m giving a JoD to Jansen for the home run (he had the team-high mark at .072 WPA). He hasn’t had many JoDs this season.

Suckage: Stripling (-.181) and Mayza (-.140). The lineup deserves one too. Vlad hasn’t looked good at the plate for the last couple of days. I’m not going to worry yet.

Tomorrow’s game is a 7:00 Eastern start. I hate night games on the weekend.

We had 626 comments in the GameThread. I led us to bitter, very bitter, defeat.