Another loss at Tropicana

Blue Jays 2 Rays 5

Am I remembering wrong, or weren’t we able to score runs earlier in the season?

Yet another game where we got runners on early and didn’t score them:

• In the first: Marcus Semien and Vladimir Guerrero walked, to give us two on and one out. But we didn’t score.
• In the third: We did score, Santiago Espinal doubled and Marcus Semien homered. But that was it for the day.
• In the fourth: We had a single and a double, but no runs.

The rest of the way we four base runners. Not really a recipe for success.

There was some hope in the ninth. Randal Grichuk, with one out, reached on error (originally called a hit). Lourdes Gurriel followed with a walk, bringing the tying run to the plate. Santiago Espinal was up next. I don’t know why Cavan Biggio wasn’t hitting in his place. It seemed the obvious move. Espinal hit into a double play, but the Rays didn’t turn it, so we still had the tying run at the plate. It was Reese McGuire. He popped out to center.

Ross Stripling gave up just 4 hits but 3 of them were home runs, accounting for the 4 runs against him. He only went 3.2 innings. Other than the home runs, he looked pretty good, getting 5 strikeouts. But the ball traveled on him.

We used a bunch of relievers:

• Anthony Kay finished out the fourth inning, but gave up 2 walks, getting just 1 out in the fifth.
• Trevor Richards stranded Kay’s runners and pitched the sixth. He looked excellent, getting 4 strikeouts in his 5 outs.
• Tim Mayza pitched the seventh. He walked the first guy of the eighth and came out for
• Jordan Romano getting work for the first time in days, give up a steal and a popup single that the Jays weren’t in any hurry to get back to the infield, so the runner scored from second when he shouldn’t have. The rest of the inning went caught stealing, strikeout, walk single, and strikeout.

I’ve made so many burn down Tropicana jokes I’m sure I’m on US Homeland Security's radar, but what a terrible place.

Of note, Vlad was picked off first base in the first inning, something that can’t happen.

Jays of the Day: Semien (.166 WPA) and I’m going to give one to Richards (.081).

Suckage: Stripling (-.322), Vlad (-.109, plus getting picked off), Randal (-.124) and Springer (-.093).

Tomorrow is our last game before the All-Star break and I think we need the rest. The team and me......Bob Rae vs. Rich Hill. If it wasn’t a morning game here, I would watch it at the bar. I still might.

We had 407 comments in the GameThread. Gids10UK led us to bitter defeat.