The debut of Aaron Sanchez couldn't have gone better, Jays beat Red Sox

Jays Beat Red Sox!

Red Sox 4 Blue Jays 6

The important part: Aaron Sanchez looked great. His first MLB inning and he faces Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz and Mike Napoli and he gets all three out. Then, surprising me, Gibby puts him out for a second inning and he gets 2 strikeouts in his clean inning. 2 perfect innings, a great way to start a career. You couldn't ask for a better major league debut.

R.A. Dickey was ok. He gave up 3 runs in the first inning, a 3-run homer by Ortiz (he crushed it), before getting his first out. But he settled down after that. He allowed 1 more run in the 5th. His best inning was the 4th: after a lead off walk and a Munenori Kawasaki throwing error put runners on 2nd and 3rd, with no outs, he got Jackie Bradley and Shane Victorino to strikeout and Dustin Pedroia to ground out. A nifty bit of work to get himself out of trouble.

I'll admit I was worried when Casey Janssen came into the game in the 9th, considering his last two outings, but he got 3 quick outs and his 15th save. He looked like the Casey we know and love.

Our offense is looking so much better of late.

We scored 3 in the bottom of the first, to match the Red Sox.  Jose Reyes singled, Melky Cabrera walked and Jose Bautista doubled in Reyes. After Navarro hit into a force at the plate (Melky really shouldn't have been running), Bautista scored from third on a Colby Rasmus ground out to first. Mike Napoli caught the ground ball basically standing on first, and threw home, but Jose was half way between first and the plate and scored pretty easy, great aggressive running. Kawasaki singled, a ground ball off Clay Buchholz head. Then Josh Thole hit a ball to the opposite field, over the left fielder's head, unfortunately for a ground rule double, scoring Navarro. If it hadn't bounced over the fence, Kawasaki would have scored.

We got 2 more in the 6th. Thole led off with a walk. Ryan Goins tripled him in. Great swing from Goins. I'd love to see that more from him.  Jose Reyes singled home Goins.

Bautista homered in the 7th, his first home run since July 2nd. Very nice to see.

We had 8 hits. Bautista (double an homer) and Thole (single and double) each had 2 hits.

Nice to see Thole and Goins help out on offense.

Anthony Gose was hit twice by pitch. It's great to have him on base. He stole second twice. Unfortunately, in the 4th inning, after he stole 2nd, he decided to try to steal 3rd and he was out easy. There was no reason to go for third.

We did get some good defense. Jose Bautista started a nice double play, in the 2nd inning, getting a ground ball at first, moving to get a good angle to second base and making a great throw. Unfortunately, he also had a ground ball go through him, later in the game, and he couldn't corral Kawasaki's wild throw from third, in the 4th inning.

Jays of the Day are Sanchez (.176 WPA), Reyes (.176), Bautista (.154,I hope he's back to his usual self, we need him) and Thole (.182).

Suckage goes to Navarro (-.158) for his 0 for 4.

Source: FanGraphs

We had a really nice pair of GameThreads. 1510 comments. It was a close battle, but Pikachu won out, but he also called me old, so I'm not complementing his win. So there.