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 out of a wild card spot. If we could win again tomorrow, their chances would be next to zero.
And our Jays are only three games under .500, which surprises me. Getting back to .500 would be nothing short of a miracle.
We’ve had a lot of wins lately thanks to our great starting pitchers. Tonight I think we can all agree that we haven’t had great starting pitchers, but Jose Berrios got the outs when he needed them.
Berrios pitched 7.2 innings and allowed just three runs, two of which were earned, but he seemed to get in and out of trouble almost every inning. He allowed 8 hits and had 6 strikeouts.
He allowed one run in the third inning on a double and a single. And then two more in the eighth inning on a single and a home run by Jarren Duran. I thought it was time to take Jose out of the game, but I told Tom_M (we were having a nice evening at the bar) that John would leave him in for one more batter so he could leave the game with one out, and he did.
Brendon Little got the last out in the eighth, but we were only up by two and I thought we needed another run or two to give me some confidence.
We did, and Little was able to make his first save of the season pretty easily.
Once again we have done enough on the offensive.
Nine hits, four walks and four errors from the Red Sox earned us seven runs. We scored:
- Five in the fifth: With one out, Leo Jimenez hit a ground-rule double over the short wall in right. Steward Berroa followed with a walk. And George Springer hit a home run. George has hit six home runs in his last 19 games, hitting .307/.354/.613. Then Joey Loperfido reached on an error by left fielder Rob Resnyder (who looked like he was going to make the catch, but it bounced off his glove). Vladimir Guerrero and Addison Barger hit singles and Loperfido scored. And Ernie Clement got another with a double.
- Two in the ninth: Vlad hit a single and got to second on an error by Tyler O’Neill. Alejandro Kirk reached first on an error by pitcher Chris Martin, which should have been a 1-3 putout. After a force out at second (I wondered why John didn’t pinch runner for Kirk, because if he had, they would have saved themselves an out and anyone with some speed would have been safe at second base), Clement stole second and scored on a single by Spencer Horwitz.
Springer and Vlad each had two hits. Loperfido (who got on base on an error), Kirk and Schneider (0 for 4 with 3 strikeouts) had 0 hits.
Jays of the day: Springer (.290 WPA), Berrios (.175) and Leo Jimenez (.089).
Other award: Davis Schneider (-.088).
Tomorrow we have what could be called game three of this four-game series (or game two of this three-game series), starting with Yariel Rodriguez (1-5, 4.40) against Cooper Criswell (5-4, 4.41).
