A's 4 Blue Jays 5
I love it when Jose Bautista is hot. He had 3 hits today, including a 2-run home run. He's hitting everything hard lately. Jose Reyes also homered in the 8th, giving us a needed insurance run. We only had 5 hits today, the Joses 4 and an RBI single by Colby Rasmus.
On the A's side, Josh Reddick hit 2 more homers, giving him 5 over the first two games of the series, doubling his season total. His 9th inning home run made it a 1-run game and had me worrying.
Mark Buehrle had an ok start, not great, unless you compare it to Rogers' start yesterday. 5.1 innings, 7 hits, 3 earned, 2 walks and 5 strikeouts. He struck out the side, around a single, in the first inning, but gave up a Reddick 2-run homer in the 2nd.
Our bullpen was great, once again. Brett Cecil came into the game with the tying run on 3rd and 1 out but got a Reddick strikeout and a Alberto Callaspo pop out to get out of the inning. Aaron Loup got the first 2 outs of the 7th and Sergio Santos got the 3rd out. Darren Oliver pitched a perfect 8th.
Then came the 9th. Casey Janssen gave up the Reddick home run to start the inning and make it a one run game. Alberto Callaspo singled. Coco Crisp got a bunt single out of his sac bunt attempt. But Casey got the lead runner at third on Stephen Vogt's sac bunt attempt. Thank you A's for trying it again. And then Jed Lowrie popped one up to Colby in center field to end the game for the second out, before the game ended on a Yoenis Cespedes swinging strikeout. Casey gets his 21st save.
Jays of the Day are Bautista (.196 WPA) and Cecil (.152). I'm going to give one to Reyes too, his WPA was only .074 but we needed the run his homer gave us, and his swing was great.
Suckage: by the numbers, Buehrle gets it at -.107.
The A's helped us out with a couple of errors, one by Josh Donaldson, a throwing error on a attempted force out at second that might have turned into a double play and allowed us to score 2 unearned runs. Alberto Callaspo made an error on a J.P. Arencibia ground ball to second, but that didn't cost the A's any runs.
Brett Lawrie made a couple of really nice plays on defense. He was also saved an error on a throw to second by a very nice play from Maicer Izturis, making a catch on Brett's bad throw.
After yesterday's terrible game, it was nice to get a win.