Sorry for the delay folks, had some computer issues. Let’s get it started shall we?
Coming off the Yankee four game sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays, the blue birds were looking to gain a few wins against the Boston Red Sox. In the first game the Jays started Brendan Morrow against the Red Sox starter John Lester. The Red Sox were looking for their 19th win of the month, which is amazing because no one thought it would happen. The Jays would score 4 unanswered runs by the fourth inning, but once again for the 5th straight game the Jays blew an early lead and by the seventh inning the Jays were losing to the Red Sox. Luckily for the Jays, Edwin Encarnacion hit his second homerun of the game in the bottom of the 7th and at the bottom of the 8th Colby Rasmus would get an RBI single to win the game 9-7. The Blue Jays pitching this season has had a lot of bad luck when their starters pitch, well it is the bullpen that fails and when the bullpen is hot then the starting pitching is not very good. They need to find that happy medium where the starters and the bullpens play well. I also blame the pitch count, Brendan Morrow pitched amazingly! He struck out seven in 5 innings, but his pitch count was high and they switched him for Aaron Loup who had 3 runs scored against and Steve Delabar earned the blown save by getting scored on.
Mark Buehrle unfortunately continued to struggle he managed to 6.2 innings, but had 7 hits, 5 runs, and had only 1 strike out and had 3 homeruns hit against him. Unfortunately, Esmil Rogers and Justin Germano could not hold back the Red Sox onslaught. Rogers had a homerun and 3 runs scored against him and he only officially had pitched a third of an inning. Germano had 6 hits, 2 runs and one homerun against him. The pitching was not the only issue that the Jays had, they only had four hits and scored one run in the whole game and that was only in the bottom of the 8th inning and the Jays were already down 8-0. The final score would be 10-1 in favour of the Boston Red Sox, Mark Buehrle is really having a hard time this season, I hope he is alright mentally, because that can really affect him if his mind is somewhere else.
The third and final game of the series was not as bad as the 10-1 loss in the second game, but was not any better, the Jays would lose 3-1. It is too bad that the Jays could not score any more runs after Brett Lawrie hit a homerun in the first inning, the Jays never seemed to be able to score for the rest of the game. JA Happ was on the mound for the Jays and although he had a great start to the season this game was a game to forget. He only pitched 3.2 innings and struck out 2 and only had 2 earned runs against him, the problem was he had tied a career high 7 walks and had a lot of command issues that game. Canadian Ryan Dempster went 6 innings with only 4 hits and one run scored against with 4 strike outs, he would earn his second win of the season. By the end of the series the Red Sox would be 20-8 in the season and the Jays would be 10-19. I bring that up because both teams are doing the opposite of what was expected of them. Everyone thought the Jays would be playing the way the Sox are playing and the Red Sox should be playing the way the Jays are playing. That is baseball and sports for you, even if it looks like you are dominate on paper it does not mean that you always will be dominate on the field.
Mariners
The first game against the Seattle Mariners was against King Felix Hernandez, the Mariners ace so we all knew it would be a hard game for the Blue Jays. The Jays would counter with Ricky Romero who had been called up from single, A Dunedin to pitch in for the ailing Josh Joshson. One pitcher would be dominant and the other would struggle, unfortunately it was not the home coming Ricky was expecting. Romero would only pitch 4 innings and have 3 hits and 3 runs scored against him and struck out 4, not bad, but not great. I say not great because King Felix would go 8 innings with only 5 hits against and struck out 7 he would of course get the win and Ricky would get the loss. The final score would be 4-0 in favour of the Mariners, playing a team like Seattle for a team like Toronto is supposed to be a winning streak starter. Well, the Jays got on a losing streak with this game.
The second game of the series just like the second game of the Red Sox series went the wrong way. After only 1 run scored in the first four innings of off Ace RA Dickey, the fourth inning was the beginning of the end for the Blue Jays. After loading the bases in the top of the fourth inning Dustin Ackley would hit a grand slam homerun off of Dickey making the game 5-0 for the Mariners, the final score would be 8-1. Canadian Michael Saunders would hit two homeruns in the game, a solo shot in the first and his second solo in the 5th inning off of Dickey. Saunders would go 3-5 with 2 runs and 3 RBI’s. The Jays only run would be in the bottom of the 7th inning, Rajai Davis would score off of a Kawasaki sac fly to center. Dickeys final numbers were 6.0 innings with 7 runs 2 walks and 5 strikeouts with 3 homeruns hit off of him. On the Marine side of the mound, Hisashi Iwakuma would pitch 7.0 strong innings with 5 hits, 1 run against and have 5 strikeouts and he would get his third win of the season.
The third and final game of the series, the Jays were looking to snap their 4 game losing streak. The Jays would score three runs in the first two innings, not with solo homeruns, but with good fundamental baseball with sacrifice flies and singles to drive in the runs. Brandon Morrow would be on the mound for the Jays and he would only have one rough inning in the 5th where two runs would be scored against him, but that was the only damage against him on his outing. Morrow would finish the game with 8.0 innings pitched, 3 hits, 2 runs and 8 strike outs to get the much deserved first win of the season.. The Jays were leading 3-2 and some people felt it was time for another collapse, but the Jays proved everyone wrong. They would score 4 runs in the bottom of the fifth, thanks to a solo shot by Melky Cabrera and Mark Derosa would hit a 2 run shot. The Jays would tie a season high 10 runs score and would have a season high of 15 hits. Cabrera, Derosa and Izturis each had 3 hits.
This game was a statement game; the Jays showed that they can play good baseball on every aspect and that it is still early in the season. If they can play the rest of the season like this 80% of the time or higher then saying that they could compete for the wild card is not that extreme. Stay tuned, as the Jays will face the Rays in Tampa and the Red Sox in Boston and they need to start getting some wins soon.
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Photo Credit: james_in_to via photopin cc
