Red Sox 5 Blue Jays 6
What a great background of the ninth. Race down:
- Alejandro Kirk, pinch, started with a single. It has a fairy tale season.
- Bradley Zimmer ran for Kirk. Zimmer is worth the place on the list for this role.
- Springer walked to move Zimmer to second. Great baptism.
- Bo makes a single upside down on the first pitch of his bat. Tie game. Just great.
- And Vlad gets the easy start, after removing two balls from the plate. One of those wonderful moments that we will remember all season.
Before the ninth, there were good parts to this game, but not enough.
Ross Stripling was very good. 5 innings, 5 hits, 2 wins, 1 walk with 3 strikeouts. He gave up a home run on Trevor Story (a line ride he didn’t think would stay high enough to clean the wall). And a run in the fifth, Christian Vazquez led with a single, Franchy Cordero followed with a double. But Ross did a pop out, a ground out (scoring the run) and a pop out.
He was helped by a good defense. In the first, Gabriel Moreno sent off Rob Refsnyder trying to steal the second, for a good double strike / elimination play. And in the second inning, Raimel Tapia made an amazing catch on a line from Alex Verdugo. Tapia ran a long way to make a great dive catch. I don’t think there’s any way that George Springer has been able to make the same catch starting from the same place.
And we did well against Michael Wacha, scoring 4 runs with 7 hits and 3 walks in 5 innings against a guy who came into the game with a 2.34 effectiveness.
We have marked:
- Three in the first: Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero did a solo walk. Teoscar Hernández doubled at home Bo (just one foot from a home run and a few inches above Alex Verdugo’s glove (see image above) and Matt Chapman doubled at home two more.
- One to third: Lourdes Gurriel advanced with a double. A single by Santiago Espinal moved him to third and scored with a single by Gabriel Moreno. It would have been nice to score more, but Tapia put up a point.
We had runners at most of the entrances. Tapia led the second with a walk. Teoscar made a single to lead the fifth (but then was doubled first when he, running in a field that had appeared, did not return to the first very quickly). Tapia and Springer had two consecutive singles in the sixth. Vlad led the seventh with a single. But we didn’t take them home.
We had 13 hits. Everyone in the starting lineup was successful. Santiago (finishing with 0 length), Vlad and Teoscar had two hits each.
Things didn’t go so well in our bullpen:
- Adam Cimber allowed just one hit to his entry.
- Trent Thornton conceded a two-run man to Rob Refsnyder, who tied the game. Refsnyder hitting a home run is hard to believe. It was useless with the bat for us.
- Tim Mayza got the last start of Trent’s seventh. But he conceded 3 hits and the pass in the eighth.
- Matt Gage got the last two outs of the eight on a swing. Christian Arroyo lined up one that Espinal caught and threw in the second to double the other Christian Red Sox player.
- Jordan Romano threw a ninth without a goal, leaving only one walk.
Jays of the Day: Bo (.265 WPA), Vlad (.245), Springer (.149), Kirk (.134, all to success), Springer (.091) and Gage (.087). We give honorable mentions to Tapia for this capture and to Espinal for the capture in the eighth lineup. That was huge.
Suckage: Mayza (-.261), Thornton (-.249) and Gurriel (-.147, leaving 4 runners at the base).
Tomorrow night we are going to sweep. Alek Manoah (9-2, 2.05) against Nick Pivetta (8-5, 3.25). Pivetta, being a good Canadian guy should let the Jays win.