Jays End Losing Skid

Red Sox 1 Blue Jays 6

For five innings, this looked like yet another game where we just couldn’t score. We had:

• We had a one-out triple in the first, nice job Nathan Lukes, but stranded him.
• Anthony Santander singled to start the second, and finished the inning at first.
• We loaded the bases in the third and, you know.

But the sixth came along and we were back to the team that can score:

• Vlad reached on an error.
• Addison Barger walked.
• Santander was hit by pitch.

The Red Sox took Brayan Bello out of the game and brought in lefty Justin Wilson. I thought John would pinch hit for Daulton Varsho with Myles Straw. I’m happy to be wrong. Varsho went to 0-2 and then homered. A grand slam.

• An out later Andrés Giménez doubled into the right field corner. A fully healthy Giménez might have made that a triple.
• And George Springer homered, on the seventh pitch of his at-bat.

That was all the runs we’d get but it was plenty.

We had a terrific bullpen day.

• Louis Varland went two perfect innings with three strikeouts.
• Eric Lauer went 3.1 perfect with two strikeouts. He came out at 44 pitches. He hasn’t thrown that many since the September 2nd, so I wasn’t surprised when he came out with right-hand batters coming up.
• Yariel Rodríguez got the last two outs of the sixth. I thought he might come out for the seventh, but John went with
• Braydon Fisher got the first two outs of the seventh, giving up two hits and a walk and a run.
• Seranthony Domínguez got the last out of the seventh and the first out of the eighth. Then gave up a single and
• Brendon Little got a double play to end the inning.
• Jeff Hoffman came in for the ninth. It went strikeout, hit batter, fly out, walk, ground ball single to third (not well hit but nicely placed) to load the bases and popout to end the game.

We did get some nice defense. Lukes made a Varsho like catch in right, which had us wondering if there would be a challenge (not really, it was an excellent catch. Barger made a great grab of a hard hit grounder (and nice throw) to end the sixth inning.

We had seven hits, and four walks, plus a couple of hit batters. Varsho had two hits, including the big homer. Clement and Tyler Heineman had 0 fors. Well, Barger did too but took two walks.

Santander had his first hit since…May 29. He also took a walk.

Jays of the Day: Lauer (.213 WPA), Varsho (.100) and Varland (.098). Let’s give an honourable mention for Springer.

Tomorrow we start the season-ending series against the Rays. Adrian Houser (8-4, 3.18) vs. Shane Bieber (.3-2, 3.57). A win would get us to one game from clinching first.