Blue Jays 7 Red Sox 3
The only thing better than beating the Red Sox is beating them twice. The Red Sox are now five games back of a Wild Card Spot. If we could win again tomorrow, their chances would be just about nil.
And our Jays are just 3 games below .500, which surprises me. Getting back to .500 would be just short of a miracle.
Great starting pitching has gotten us many wins lately. Tonight, I think we can agree we didn’t get great starting pitching, but Jose Berrios got the outs when he needed them.
Berrios pitched 7.2 innings, allowing just three runs, two earned, but he seemed to be pitching himself into and out of trouble almost every inning. He allowed 8 hits and had 6 strikeouts.
He gave up a run in the third on a double and a single. And then two more in the eighth, on a single and a Jarren Duran home run. I thought it was time to get Jose out of the game, but I said to Tom_M (we had a nice evening at the bar) that John would leave him in for one more batter so that he could leave the game after an out and that’s what he did.
Brendon Little got the last out of the eighth. But we were only up by two, and I thought we needed another run or two to make me feel confident.
We did and Little picked up a fairly easy save, his first of the season.
On offense, once again, we did enough.
Nine hits, four walks, and four Red Sox errors got us seven runs. We scored:
- Five in the fifth: With one out, Leo Jimenez hit a ground-rule double over the short wall in the right. Steward Berroa followed with a walk. And George Springer homered. George has six home runs over his last 19 games, hitting .307/.354/.613 over that time. After that, Joey Loperfido reached on an error by left fielder Rob Resnyder (who looked like he would make the catch and then had it clank off his glove). Vladimir Guerrero and Addison Barger hit singles, scoring Loperfido. And Ernie Clement doubled in one more.
- Two in the ninth: Vlad singled and went to second on a Tyler O’Neill error. Alejandro Kirk reached on a error by pitcher Chris Martin on what should have been a 1 3 putout. After a force out at second (I was wondering why John didn’t pinch run for Kirk, if he had they would have saved an out, anyone with any speed would have been safe at second). Clement stole second and scored on a Spencer Horwitz single.
Springer and Vlad had two hits each. Getting 0 fors were Loperfido (who reached on error), Kirk, and Schneider (0 for 4 with 3 strikeouts.
Jays of the Day: Springer (.290 WPA), Berrios (.175) and Leo Jimenez (.089).
Other Award: Davis Schneider (-.088).
Tomorrow we have what might be called game three of this four-game series (or game two of this three-game series). Yariel Rodriguez (1-5, 4.40) vs. Cooper Criswell (5-4, 4.41) start.