That was a lot more fun.
I'm not sure that it was because we were facing the Twins, or maybe Mark Buehrle could have pitched a good game against the Tigers, but good starting pitching makes the games much better to watch. Mark went 7 innings, allowed just 6 hits, only 1 of them an extra base hit, a double by Brian Dozier, no walks with 5 strikeouts. Back on May 6, Mark's ERA was 7.02, now it is 4.50. He's fun to watch when he's going good.
His first inning looked like it was building to be one of the horrible early innings that we've had to sit through over the past several game. Dozier beat Buehrle to first on a ground ball and I was grumbling under my breath 'Gold Glove fielder my ass'. Then, after a fly out, Ryan Doumit singled to right and went to second and Jose Bautista's throw to third. The throw as a bad idea, and it should have been cutoff. Runners on second and third with one out, I was worried we were going to be trailing early again. But Mark struck out Justin Morneau and Trevor Plouffe to get out of the inning. After that Buehrle dominated.
Brett Cecil allowed just a single in the 8th and Dustin McGowan threw a perfect 9th. Dustin looks so good out there, it is nice to see.
On offense, we were lucky to open with a pair of Joses. Reyes and Bautista each went 3 for 4 and drove in all 4 of our runs. Bautista hit his 20th home run of the season. The rest of the team managed 4 hits, one each for Adam Lind, Colby Rasmus, Maicer Izturis and J.P. Arencibia. JP also took his 10th walk of the season, evening his walks and passed balls. Munenori Kawasaki went 0 for 3 but did drop a very nice bunt.
Jays of the Day (how long has it been since we had a JoD?) are Buehrle (.321 WPA), Bautista (.203) and Reyes (.121).
No Suckage Jays, though Edwin came close to the number at -.092 for an 0 for 3 with a walk.
Our GameThread numbers were down a bit (a week of bad baseball will do that), 27 of us totaled 435 comments. I led the way, that hasn't happened much this year. Yay me.
| # | Commenter | # Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tom Dakers | 55 |
| 2 | Belisarius | 46 |
| 3 | expos&nordiques4ever | 45 |
| 4 | MjwW | 37 |
| 5 | PFHLai | 37 |
| 6 | MapleMan | 26 |
| 7 | Redonred | 25 |
| 8 | fishedin | 23 |
| 9 | TonyWalsh | 19 |
| 10 | Cranky50 | 19 |
| 11 | shortofbrillant | 15 |
| 12 | TFSML | 15 |
| 13 | Goldenhawk99 | 13 |
| 14 | GatorJay | 9 |
| 15 | Pikachu | 8 |
| 16 | REMO | 8 |
| 17 | St.Sniper | 8 |
| 18 | Super Bass Hallways | 6 |
| 19 | Carm | 4 |