Kirk homers twice, Semien once, Jays win

Blue Jays 5 Yankees 1

Six wins in a row. Life is good.

Steven Matz had another terrific start. 6 innings, 7 hits, 1 earned, 0 walks, and 6 strikeouts. I don’t think Pete Walker gets enough credit for how few walks are starters are giving up. How many 0 or 1 walk games have we had out of our starters lately? Matz didn’t give up an extra-base hit, though there were some fly-outs to the track.

And our bullpen was great:

• Joakim Soria did give up a single in his inning but followed that up with a tailor-made double-play ball. 12 pitch inning.
• Tim Mayza had a clean inning with a k.
• Jordan Romano pitched the ninth, even with the 4-run lead.

On offense, it was a home run show.

Alejandro Kirk hit two home runs, and Marcus Semien had one.

Kirk had a pretty impressive day with the bat, four at-bats, four balls hit with 100+ MPH EV:

All three homers were solo shots.

We got 2 runs in the fourth without the help of home runs:

• Teoscar Hernandez and Kirk started the inning with singles. A Lourdes Gurriel sac fly scored Teoscar. Then, a Jake Lamb walk and a passed ball got Kirk to third, and a Reese McGuire sac fly scored him.

We had 7 hits and 4 walks. Kirk had 3 hits, Semien 2. Leadoff man Corey Dickerson and Teoscar Hernandez had one each.

Vlad’s hitting streak ended, but he did take a walk.

In the Wild Card race, the Jays are now 2.5 games behind the Yankees and 2 behind the Red Sox (who just lost to the Rays).

On the Yankees side, Gerrit Cole came out after 3.2 because of damage to his ERA tightness in his hamstring.

Jays of the Day: Matz (.217 WPA), Kirk (.288), and Semien (.152).

Suckage: Bo got the number (-.122) for a 0 for 4 night). He also had one bad throw to first that Vlad laid out to get and managed to stay attached to the bag at first.

Tomorrow Alek Manoah (5-2, 3.63) tries to keep the win streak going, with someone named Luis Gil starting for the Yankees. Gil has made 3 starts and hasn’t given up a run yet, with 9 hits, 7 walks, and 18 strikeouts in 15.2 innings. I’m betting his ERA goes up tomorrow.

We had 659 comments in the game. Link Floyd led us to a drama-free win.