Jays Hit 5 Doubles in the 3rd, Beat the Rays

Rays 2 Blue Jays 9

Many games seem to turn on one play.

Today, in the third inning, after two three-up, three-down innings for the Jays batters. Cavan Biggio, with one out and a runner on second, hit a fly deep to center field. Kevin Kiermaier went back on the ball but tried to make a basket catch (for some reason). The ball went off his glove for a “double” and the flood gates opened. I thought Kiermaier was too nonchalant on the play.

The Jays had five doubles and five runs that inning. Just one short of the AL record for doubles in an inning. We had doubles from Lourdes Gurriel, Biggio (RBI), Bo Bichette (RBI), Vladimir Guerrero (2 RBI) and Alejandro Kirk (RBI). The game went from 1-0 Rays to 5-1 Jays in a hurry.

We got three more in the sixth. Gurriel singled, and Santiago Espinal walked. Biggio walked. George Springer singled home two. Bo hit a fly out to the right-field corner that allowed the runners on second and third to tag up. And Biggio scored on a ground-out by Vlad.

The ninth run came on a Lourdes Gurriel home run in the seventh.

We had 11 hits, 1 home run, 6 doubles, and 5 walks.

Jose Berrios, coming off a terrible start, wasn’t terrible today. He wasn’t great, but he got through 5 innings allowing 2 runs. He gave up 8 hits and 2 walks with just 3 strikeouts. But most of the hits were soft contact seeing-eye singles. Very little was hit hard, but then he didn’t get a lot of swing and miss either.

He seemed to get the outs when he needed them, and there was some good defense behind him.

Jose threw too many pitches, he seemed to nibble too much but if some of the soft contact would have been at the fielders his day would have looked much better.

Trent Thornton, Sergio Romo (1 walk, 2 strikeouts, in his first Jays inning), and Max Castillo pitched four scoreless innings to finish it out.

The Rays used outfielder Brett Phillips to pitch the 8th. We just got one hit off him. But then we didn’t need to score by then.

Jays of the Day: Bo (.165 WPA), Biggio (.114, 2 for 2, walk), Gurriel (.095, 3 for 3, homer, double, walk) and Vlad (.093, 1 for 5, 3 RBI).

No one on the Suckage side. Espinal had the low mark at -.059.

Tomorrow we get two games (wait until my wife hears about that):

• 12:00 Eastern: McClanahan (8-3, 1.77) vs. Kevin Gausman (6-6, 2.92).
• 6:00 Eastern: Drew Rasmussen (5-3, 3.41) vs. Thomas Hatch making a spot start.