A Frustrating Loss for the Jays

Blue Jays 3 Mets 5

It was one of those games where the first few innings were incredibly frustrating:

• In the first, George Springer led off with a double. Vladimir Guerrero popped out to center, and then, for unknown reasons, Springer tried and failed to steal third. We don’t score.
• In the second, Bo Bichette led off with a walk, got moved to second on a ground out, and that’s where he stayed.
• In the third, Alejandro Kirk started things off with a double, which led to the incredible entertainment of watching Ross Stripling try and fail to bunt. In fairness, with Kirk’s speed, it would be almost impossible to bunt him to third. Springer popped up, Vlad lined out, and we don’t score again.
• In the fourth, Marcus Semien was the one who led off with a double and stayed there.
• In the fifth, well, this time, it was a one-out single by Kirk. Again Stripling tried to bunt (I would have been happier with him trying to slap one through the crashing infield). Kirk, knowing his speed, tries to get a little bit extra on the jump and is picked off when Ross misses a bunt attempt.

We did score in the sixth. In the bottom of the inning, Rich Hill came up to bat with two-on and two-out. I was sure they would pinch-hit, but they left him to hit. That was a big mistake.

Springer walked. Vlad lined one hard off the right-field wall. Too hard has it turned out, just a single. Semien was hit by pitch (on ball four, if you are going to hit a batter, you might as well do it earlier in the count). Out goes Hill with the bases loaded and no outs.

In comes Seth Lugo. Bo singles home two, and we have runners on the corners. Teoscar grounds one at third. I thought double play, but the Mets came home late and a run scored. Unfortunately, that’s where the scoring ended for the inning.

Stripling, coming off a terrible outing, was excellent today. 5 innings, 5 hits (4 singles and a double), no walks, and 6 strikeouts.

Ryan Borucki had a rough time. To be fair, the strike zone seemed to be moving all game long. But he gave up a walk, wild pitch, and a Pete Alfonso home run, getting two outs. They likely should have pitched around Alfonso when he got to second on the wild pitch. Only the second time this season, Ryan’s given up more than 1 earned in an outing.

Jacob Barnes came in and had more trouble. He gave up 2 hits, a walk, and 2 earned. But, again, getting the odd call would have helped a lot.

Tim Mayza finally came in and got the last out of the inning. Mayza also got the first out of the seventh. After that, Trent Thornton got the last two outs.

Rafael Dolis had a relatively, quick clean eighth inning. Vlad helped him with a nice play at first base.

We tried to mount a comeback in the eighth.

Semien led off with a double. Bo singled him to third. Teoscar drove him home. Randal Grichuk flied out to deep center. Bo tagged up, and Mets’ CF Brandon Nimmo threw to third, allowing Teoscar to tag up too. Terrible move on Nimmo’s part. It looked like Mets’ catcher Tomas Nido blocked the plate. If Teoscar had been called out, it would have been interesting if we could have gotten the call.

Kirk up with runners on second and third. He’s already had two hits, but he popped up on the first pitch. He had a good day with the bat, but we could have used patience there. Instead, Cavan Biggio sliced one the other way but right to the left fielder.

In the ninth, Vlad walked with one out, but Semien struck out. Vlad moved to second on a wild pitch. Bo up, and he got to a full count. But he chased off the plate.

It will be interesting to see the Umpire Scorecard on Twitter tomorrow. Unfortunately, it seemed we were getting the short end of the plate umpire’s calls.

Of course, 3 for 19 with RISP wasn’t good either. One hard-hit ball could have helped so much.

Jays of the Day: Bo (.209 WPA, for his 2 for 4, 2 RBI), Vlad (.178, for a 1 for 4, walk), Marcus (.135, 2 for 4, walk), and Stripling (.101).

I figured the strikeout to end the game would bring Bo’s number down, but he had a couple of big hits.

Suckage: Barnes (-.336), Borucki (-.282), Biggio (-.206, 0 for 2, coming into the game late), Kirk (-.153, kind of hard to believe on a 2 for 4 day, but he needed a productive out in the eighth), Espinal (-.094, 0 for 3, he had a couple of spots where a single would have changed the game) and Randal (-.090, 0 for 4, strikeout, same comment as Espinal).

We had 462 comments in the GameThread. I led us to a frustrating loss.