A bad inning from Berrios and no offense, Jays lose

White Sox 5 Blue Jays 2

This one went bad early.

Jose Berrios gave up 4 runs in the first inning. His inning went single, single, home run (Jose Abreu), pop out, single, strikeout, single, double, strikeout.

He had two scoreless innings after that, but the damage was done. He gave up a couple of singles in the second and one more in the third. I would have left him in for the fourth, but I don’t know how he was feeling.

Trent Thornton threw 2 innings allowing a run.

Connor Overton threw 3 scoreless innings, helped out by a terrific throw from Josh Palacios from center field, gunning down Zack Collins at the plate. Sportsnet told us that Josh’s throw was 92.1 MPH. Not bad at all.

Throws in from the outfield were about the only good thing about the game. Lourdes Gurriel threw out Abreu, trying to stretch a double into, well, a double. Teoscar Hernadez threw out a runner trying to go first to third on a single. I wonder how often all three starting outfielders have picked up an assist in a game before?

Brad Hand got the ninth. Good spot for him to work things out.

Offensively, we didn’t do much against Dylan Cease. Cease went 7 innings, allowed just 4 hits, 1 walk with 7 strikeouts. We got a run against him in the seventh, on a Corey Dickerson home run.

Things got exciting in the eighth. We got a couple of singles off Michael Kopech, prompting White Sox crypt keeper manager Tony La Russa to bring in Liam Hendricks. Hendricks walked Marcus Semien to load the bases and bring up Vlad as the tying run, but Vlad, on a full-count pitch, ground into a double play.

We had another shot in the ninth. Teoscar led off with a single. An out later, Kirk singled off the center-field wall. A Gurriel single score one and brought the tying run to the plate again. But Josh Palacios chased a high pitch for his fourth strikeout of the night. And Espinal, after a long at-bat, ground out to second. It was a good at-bat against a tough pitcher.

On the whole, we had 9 hits. Kirk and Gurriel were the only Jays with 2 hits. Kirk (double) and Dickerson (homer) had the only extra-base hits.

I’d like to think the Jays could come back from down by 5, but they just aren’t hitting lately.

No JoD today. I’ll give an honorable mention to Overton for his three good innings of work.

Suckage: Berrios (-.243 WPA) and Vlad (-.139, mostly on the double-play ball in the eighth).

Tomorrow Lucas Giolitto (9-9, 3.77) goes against Rob Rae (9-5, 2.29).

We had 307 comments in the GameThread. HeyBoyBlueisBack led us to defeat.