Vlad Gets Walk-Off Single, Jays Beat Red Sox

Red Sox 5 Blue Jays 6

What a great bottom of the ninth. Down a run:

• Alejandro Kirk, pinch-hitting, led off with a single. He’s having a fairy tale season.
• Bradley Zimmer pinch-ran for Kirk. Zimmer is worth the roster spot for this role.
• Springer walked to move Zimmer to second. Great at-bat.
• Bo singles the other way on the first pitch of his at-bat. Tie game. Just amazing.
• And Vlad gets the walk-off single, after taking two balls off the plate. One of those wonderful moments that we’ll remember all season.

Before the ninth, there were good parts to that game, just not enough of them.

Ross Stripling was very good. 5 innings, 5 hits, 2 earned, 1 walk with 3 strikeouts. He did give up a home run to Trevor Story (a line drive that I didn’t think would stay high enough to clear the wall). And a run in the fifth, Christian Vazquez led off with a single, Franchy Cordero followed with a double. But Ross got a pop out, ground out (scoring the run) and pop out.

He was helped out by some nice defense. In the first, Gabriel Moreno threw out Rob Refsnyder trying to steal second, for a nice strikeout/throwout double play. And in the second inning , Raimel Tapia made an amazing catch on an Alex Verdugo line drive. Tapia ran a long way to make a great diving catch. I don’t think there is any way George Springer could have made the same catch starting from the same spot.

And we did well against Michael Wacha, scoring 4 runs off 7 hits and 3 walks in 5 innings against a guy who came into the game with a 2.34 ERA.

We scored:

• Three in the first: Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero each took a one-out walk. Teoscar Hernandez doubled home Bo (just a foot short of a home run, and a few inches above Alex Verdugo’s glove (see picture above). And Matt Chapman doubled home two more.
• One in the third: Lourdes Gurriel led off with a double. A Santiago Espinal single moved him to third and he scored on Gabriel Moreno's single. It would have been nice to score more but Tapia struck out.

We had runners on most innings. Tapia led off the second with a walk. Teoscar singled to lead off the fifth (but then was doubled off first when he, running on a pitch that was popped up, didn’t get back to first very quickly). Tapia and Springer had back-to-back two-out singles in the sixth. Vlad led off the seventh with a single. But we didn’t bring any of them home.

We had 13 hits. Everyone in the starting lineup had a hit. Santiago (ending a long 0 for), Vlad and Teoscar had two hits each.

Things didn’t go so well for our bullpen:

• Adam Cimber allowed just a hit in his inning.
• Trent Thornton gave up a two-run home to Rob Refsnyder, which tied the game. Refsnyder hitting a home run is hard to believe. He was useless with the bat for us.
• Tim Mayza got the last out of Trent’s seventh. But he gave up 3 hits and the go-ahead run in the eighth.
• Matt Gage got the last two outs of the eight on one swing. Christian Arroyo lined one that Espinal caught and tossed to second to double up the other Christian Red Sox player.
• Jordan Romano pitched a scoreless ninth, giving up just a walk.

Jays of the Day: Bo (.265 WPA), Vlad (.245), Springer (.149), Kirk (.134, all on the pinch hit), Springer (.091) and Gage (.087). Let’s give honorable mentions to Tapia for that catch and Espinal for the catch on the lineout in the eighth. That was huge.

Suckage: Mayza (-.261), Thornton (-.249) and Gurriel (-.147, leaving 4 runners on base).

Tomorrow night we go for the sweep. Alek Manoah (9-2, 2.05) vs. Nick Pivetta (8-5, 3.25). Pivetta, being a good Canadian boy should let the Jays win.