Jays crush the Red Sox

Red Sox 4 Blue Jays 12

Through the first four innings, we had two hits, and Nathan Eovaldi looked very good.

But I’m taking credit for the big inning because, just before the fifth inning, I tweeted this:

Yes, the baseball players get all the fame (and money), but we scored nine runs because of me.

In the fifth:

• Alejandro Kirk started things off with a hard-hit double to left. I just love watching him swing a bat.
• Randal Grichuk doubled to left. One run.
• Breyvic Valera, after two feeble bunt attempts, sliced a double to right. Two runs.
• George Springer hit one to deep center. I thought it was out. I think George thought it was out but caught on the track. Valera to third.
• Red Sox walked Vlad, chickens.
• Marcus Semien struck out.
• Bo Bichette singled. Three runs.
• Teoscar Hernandez doubled. Vlad and Bo (all the way from first) scored. Five runs.
• Lourdes Gurriel homers. Seven runs.

And that was all for Eovaldi. How you leave a starter in for 7 runs is beyond me.

In comes Hansel Robles.

• Kirk singles.
• Randal Grichuk gets hit by pitch, getting the Jays bench upset. Charlies comes out. Umpires talk. And they warn both benches. Charlie is still irritated. Robles throws a couple more pitches and then takes a couple of steps towards the Jays bench (I imagine the Jays have been yelling things at him in several languages).
• Valera singles. Bases loaded. I said nasty things about him today. I’m sorry.
• Springer gets a ground-rule double, Nine runs.
• Vlad generously ends the inning.

We got another run in the sixth: Marcus doubles, and Teoscar singled him home.

And one more in the seventh: Grichuk singled (if he could get hot again, it would be great), and Springer drove one to right-center that the Red Sox outfielders each very politely left for the other to get, turning a single into a triple.

The Red Sox brought in a position player to pitch the ninth, Jonathan Arauz. A soft tosser just lobbed them in. Bo crushed one right at the right fielder (almost knocked him down) for an out. Teoscar singled. Lourdes doubled. Kirk got a sac fly.

We had 17 hits. Three for Teoscar, Two each from George, Marcus, Bo, Alejandro, Randal, Gurriel, and Valera. Vlad had the 0 for, but he hit a hard grounder towards first that was right at the first baseman. A bit of bad luck there.

Alek Manoah had to work a bit. He gave up 2 runs, 4 hits, 3 walks with 4 strikeouts in 5 innings.

He loaded the bases in the fifth but got out of it with just one run scoring. That was a big moment. Or seemed like a big moment before we scored the nine runs.

Our bullpen had a rough time:

• Ryan Borucki walked a guy and gave up a home run. Then came out of the game when he gave up a two-out single.
• Rafael Dolis got the third out of the sixth. But then he had some trouble in the seventh. He got the first two outs. All looked good. Then single, walk, walk. Thankfully he got a popout to end the inning without a run-scoring.
• Brad Hand and his pitching stylings (for the longest time, people would introduce a singer and say ‘his vocal stylings’, which meant he couldn’t carry a tune) came in for the eighth. But he had a lovely inning, giving up just an infield single that Bo tried to make a play on but threw over Vlad and getting two strikeouts.
• Tayler Saucedo got the ninth.

Jays of the Day: Bo (.132 WPA), Valera (.113). Hernandez (.112) and Grichuk (.111).

No Suckage Jays. Semien had the low mark at -.085. He had two hits, but they came later in the game when things were decided.

Tomorrow we have a doubleheader. The first time is a 3:00 Eastern start. Game two is to start at 7:00.

We had 1038 comments in the GameThread. EMK19 just barely beat out a few of us to lead us to victory.