Rabu, 31 Juli 2019

Vlad hits a Grand Slam, Jays win - Bluebird Banter

Blue Jays 9 Royals 2

Sean Reid-Foley worked some sort of magic, going 5 scoreless innings even though he allowed 4 hits, 4 walks (and had a couple of errors behind him). He had 4 strikeouts, including 3 in the third inning after giving up a leadoff double. I don’t think we can hope for that sort of luck every start, but then only gave up one extra base hit. I hope he can cut down on the walks in the future.

Wilner Font had a bit of magic of his own, getting through 2 scoreless innings while giving up 3 hits. He was helped out by a very nice catch from Teoscar Hernandez in center field, saving what would have been a double and getting a nice double play turned from the shift, with Vlad making the play at second and throw to first, looking like a real second baseman.

The magic ran out when Joe Biagini came in for the eighth inning. He gave up a run on 2 doubles. It would have been worst but Randal Grichuk made a super diving catch in right that saved at least one run.

Daniel Hudson pitched the ninth. He gave up a run on 2 hits.

The Royals left 11 men on base.


Offensively, well we got a bit of luck there too.

The big hit of the game came in the ninth inning, when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. came up with the bases loaded and drove the ball 402 feet, well over the wall in left. Of course, if it wasn’t for an error by Royals shortstop Humberto Arteaga (which gave us the first run in our 5 run ninth), the inning would have ended before Vlad come to bat.

Vlad’s homer ended any drama there might have been in the bottom of the inning.

Before the ninth we scored:

  • Two in the first: New leadoff hitter Bo Bichette started the game with a single. He moved up on a ground out then scored on Lourdes Gurriel’s single. Grichuk single to give us runners on first and second, but then Lourdes was thrown out at the front of a double steal. He had a bit of a weird slide, or else he might have been safe. Vlad followed with a single, driving in Grichuk from second.
  • Two in the fifth: Brandon Drury walked, Danny Jansen doubled and both scored on a broken bat bloop single from Freddy Galvis. As Lalalaprise mentioned in the GameThread, baseball is a funny game, before Galvis had his bloop single, Bo Bichette ripped a hard ground ball, but right at the Royals shortstop, for an out. Freddy makes poor contact, breaks his bat and gets 2 RBI.

We had 10 hits. Bichette (hitting .375 after 2 games), Galvis and Vlad had 2 each. Vlad set a career high with 5 runs driven in and has his average up to .261. The only Jays not to have a hit were Drury and Biggio and they both had walks.


We had a couple of errors. Vlad had a throwing error on a pretty tough play, throwing on the run and not missing the target by all that much, but Drury at first base reached into the runner on the catch and had the ball (and glove) knocked out of his hand. He likely should have been able reach away from the runner. Drury was very heads up after dropping the ball, he got to the ball quick and made a great throw to Bichette, covering third, to get the runner trying to go first to third.

And Cavan had a ball go through him at second base. That seems to be happening a fair bit.

We also had great catches by Teoscar and Grichuk.


Should I mention that the Jays are 2-0 in the post-Stroman era? See, the unnamed sources were right, he was a cancer (of course, I’m joking). It does seem like the young guys enjoy playing together.


Jays of the Day: Reid-Foley (.265, he wasn’t great but he got the outs when he needed them) and I’m giving one to Vlad (.068) for the Grand Slam. He didn’t get much WPA love because we were already up by 3 when he hit it in the ninth.

No Suckage Jays.


We had 837 comments in the GameThread. Chatty Cathy led us to victory. Great job.



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July 31, 2019 at 11:13AM

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