Jays hit 3 home runs, beat the Astros

Blue Jays 8 Astros 4

I like when we hit home runs. Three today, and I’ll admit I yelled loudly when Semien’s went out in the ninth.

Steven Matz looked terrific for the first three innings. The fourth inning wasn’t good, it started out double, homer (not exactly crushed), double and it was looking grim. But a ground ball that Vlad knocked down and then outraced Carlos Correa to first (Matz should have covered first but he played spectator). Then a flyout and ground out got us out of the inning up by three. Another run, on three singles, in the fifth made it a two-run game and ended Matz night. It would have been nice if he could have pitched deeper into the game, but we’ll take what we can get.

Tyler Chatwood pitched two excellent innings. I think I would have let him start another inning.

Jordan Romano gave up a hard-hit Alex Bergman double to start the eighth. Two ground would score Bergman, making it a one-run game.

Travis Bergen got the ninth inning after we added three runs to our lead. He got a strikeout and two weak flyouts. I’m glad we got those extra runs, I would have sweat through my shirt if Bergen was trying to protect a one-run lead.

On offense, we did damage in the second and third innings and then stopped hitting, until the ninth.

In the second, Cavan Biggio hit a two-run homer. Nice to hit one in front of his Hall of Fame dad.

In the third, Danny Jansen led off with a home run (three games in a row with a home run). He has his average over .100 finally. And then walks to Marcus Semien and Vladimir Guerrero set up a Randal Grichuk two-run double.

We would only get one more hit over the next five innings, a Rowdy Tellez single in the fourth.

But in the ninth, Biggio led off with a walk. Then Gurriel ground one to third but his brother couldn’t make the catch at first base (that turned out to be a huge play). Cavan hustled to third. Amazingly to me, Charlie had Santiago Espinal pinch hit for Rowdy. Even with a lefty pitcher that seems a bad move. I don’t get it, an MLB manager shouldn’t be allowing himself to be fooled by small sample size stats. Espinal hit a ground ball back to the pitcher, which thankfully was too softly hit for a double play. After a Danny Jansen strikeout (a long at-bat against someone obviously checking into a hotel with someone who isn’t his wife, Joe Smith (sure, that’s his name)).

Thankfully Marcus Semien popped one into the Crawford Boxes (one of the softest hit home runs (91.5 MPH) we’ll have this year, but it counts) to put us up 8-4. Thank you so much Marcus.

In all, we had five hits and five walks. Thankfully three of the hits were home runs. Cavan was the star, with the homer and two walks.

Jays of the Day: Biggio (.201 WPA), Chatwood (.144), Semien (.115), and Grichuk (.113).

No Suckage Jays. Hernandez had the low mark at -.060.

Tomorrow we have a 2:00 start. Nate Pearson will be making the start, with someone coming off the active roster. I’m not sure who.

We had 649 comments in the GameThread. I led us to victory.