Jays lose game and Springer is hurt

Blue Jays 3 Mariners 9

The big news is George Springer came out of the game with an apparent ankle injury. He could put some weight on it, walking off the field, but needed help going down the stairs in the dugout. I hope it looks worse than it really is. We really can’t do without him for any length of time.

On a fly ball to the wall, George made an awkward jump and landed wrong on his ankle. Sprained? Gotta hope it isn’t worse than sprained. The play turned into a triple, putting the tying run on third.

Ryu got the next batter to ground to a drawn-in Bo Bichette. Then a walk and Charlie took Ryu out of the game and in comes Richards. Richards has been so good, it seemed like a good move. Seemed. There was some complaining about taking Ryu out after 89 pitches, but not all that much really.

Richards fell behind Luis Torrens, grooved one, and Torrens hit it out. 3-run homer, suddenly we are down by two and Ryu’s good night looks bad.

Richards gives up another homer. I guess that made me stop worrying about Springer for a bit. Tayler Saucedo came in and got us out of the inning.

Rafael Dolis pitched the eight, he gave up a sinking liner to left that Lourdes dove at, turning a single into a double. The replay should Lourdes with his eyes closed sort of told the story of the night. A wild pitch moved the runner to third and a walk gave the M’s runners on the corners with no outs. Another walk loaded the bases. Next batter flared one over Bo, for a run. good pitch, bad contact, and a hit. The next wasn’t a good pitch or bad contact, double into the corner, two more runs.

Kirby Snead in with 2 on and no outs. He managed to get out of the inning without more runs scoring, not that it mattered.

On the list of things that drive fans crazy, letting a pitcher having a bad night off the hook is near the top of the list. Yusei Kikuchi had a rough night, but we didn’t make him pay.

• In the second, after a Teoscar Hernandez home run, The Jays loaded the bases on an error and two walks. Bases loaded, one out, we should score, but no.
• In the third, a Vlad single and Bichette walk, plus a single from Teoscar scored a run. But two on, no one out, Lourdes Gurriel strikes out and then the Jays pull a double steal, but Teoscar, the trailing running, doesn’t slide into second, he kind of runs across the bag, stops and gets tagged out, ending the inning. Apparently, it didn’t occur to him that they would throw to second.
• In the fifth, we got one more run. Vlad single. Bo took his place at first hitting into a force out. A Teoscar double gave us runners on second and third and ended Kikuchi’s night. We’d only get the one run out of it.

We had 7 hits and 5 walks. Once again we couldn’t hit with RISP. 1 for 10 tonight.

Teoscar (3) and Vlad (6) had 6 of our 7 hits.

Vlad’s hitting was the only good part of this mess. He had the three hardest-hit balls of the game: 115.6, 115.5, and 114.3.

Jay of the Day: Teoscar (.238 WPA).

Suckage: Richards (-.436), McGuire (-.151, 0 for 4, 2 strikeouts) and Springer (-.090, 0 for 3, strikeout).

Let’s give a JoD to the nice people that make Angel’s Envy Bourbon, which helped me get through the last couple of innings.

Tomorrow is an afternoon game (I thought it was another late night game, thanks to Minor League for setting me straight), 4:00 Eastern.

We had 504 comments in the GameThread. I led us to a humiliating defeat.