A Kevin Smith Homer Beats Jays

Blue Jays 2 A’s 5

I liked Kevin Smith. I liked Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Clerks and several other of his films. And I liked him as a prospect coming up with the Jays. I don’t like him today.

Crappy off-balance swing on a pitch three inches below the strike zone and it goes out. And that was the difference in the game.

Trevor Richards didn’t have a good day. He gave up a couple of singles and then the Smith home run.

Beyond that, Hyun Jin Ryu wasn’t great, but wasn’t bad. 5 innings, 5 hits, 2 earned, both on a Carlos Perez home run. Perez was also a Blue Jays prospect, several years ago.

We had a scoreless inning out of Chad Green and Jay Jackson, but by then it didn’t matter.

On offense, they didn’t do enough. We got a run in the second, Cavan Biggio doubled, and Ernie Clement singled him home. And a run in the eighth on a Davis Schneider home run.

We had chances:

• In the third: A Schneider walk and a Biggio single but no runs.
• In the fourth: Daulton Varsho reached on a bunt single, but he was picked off first and thrown out. Then Tyler Heineman walked. Had Varsho not been out on the bases, we would have had two on and the top of the order coming up.
• In the ninth: Santiago Espinal singled, but Spencer Horwitz hit into a double play.

And Vlad had a couple of hard-hit balls. A 358-foot fly in the fifth and a 377-foot liner in the eighth. Both I thought were hit better than Smith’s homer, but both came up short.

Guerrero also had a rather spectacular play in the fourth. Brent Rooker had a double and was on second, when Ryan Noda ground one at Guerrero. Vlad threw to third (I really thought it was a bad move) and Espinal tagged Rooker.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be in vain as Carlos Perez homered an out later.

The Jays managed only 6 hits. Biggio had two. We had 0 fors from Springer, Guerrero, and Merrifield.

No Jays of the Day today. Clement had the high mark at .073. But he also double-clutched on a ground ball. It wasn’t called and error, but it could have been.

The Other Award: Richards (-.200). And, though they didn’t get quite to the number, let’s give Springer (-.086), Espinal (-.081), Vlad (-.078) and Merrifield (-.074) the honours as well.

Tomorrow is an off-day and then we have three with the Royals in Toronto.