Blue Jays 6 Tigers 1<\/p>\n
I might be dreaming, but we are 6.5 games ahead of the Yankees. 6.5. It is hard to believe. <\/p>\n
Say it with me…..we should have scored more. <\/p>\n
But four turned out to be plenty. Normally, we wait until the fifth or sixth innings to get our runs; today, we waited until the eighth. I guess the Jays just wanted to be more sporting, let the Tigers feel they had a chance for a bit longer.<\/p>\n
We scored:<\/p>\n
Two in the eighth: Joey Loperfido and George Springer started the inning with singles. A wild pitch moved them to second and third. After a Vlad ground out, Bo Bichette singled them home (going to second himself on a throwing error. Springer slid into the plate.
\nFour in the ninth: Ernie Clement singled, and Nathan Lukes followed with a homer. Two outs later, Springer homered and Vlad homered (getting forgiveness for ranging too far off third on a squeeze bunt attempt).<\/p>\n
Kevin Gausman was terrific. Six innings, just one hit, one walk and ten strikeouts. He outdueled Tarik Skubal (though we didn\u2019t score off him). <\/p>\n
Gausman even picked up Addison Barger, who made a very sad error on a fly ball, hit right to him, and had it clang off the outside of his glove.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, he didn\u2019t get the win. <\/p>\n
Braydon Fisher pitched a quick 7seventh (getting the win). Tommy Nance had a quick eighth (with two strikeouts). He gave up a leadoff single in the ninth (getting the next batter to fly out). The batter would move up to second and third on defensive interference (twice).<\/p>\n
Mason Fluharty came in and got a ground out, scoring the run, and a strikeout. <\/p>\n
Skubal pitched six innings, allowing five hits, three walks, and seven strikeouts. We did pretty well against him. <\/p>\n
In the fourth, with one out, Vlad singled and Bo doubled. Unfortunately, Alejandro Kirk (who doubled earlier) had to come out of the game after taking a ball off the mask. I hope he\u2019s ok, cause we need him. Tyler Heineman pinch hit for him. John Schneider had him try to put down a squeeze bunt. He missed, and Vlad was too far off third and was put out. Tough spot for both. Putting down a squeeze bunt against Skubal isn\u2019t easy, and scoring on a squeeze bunt is also not easy. Vlad needed a leadoff to have a shot. I hated the decision to try it, figuring Heineman had a better chance at hitting a sac fly. <\/p>\n
And in the sixth, with one out, Springer singled, Vlad and Bo walked to load the bases. Heineman popped a soft one to center that Matt Vierling almost made a sliding catch on. Springer was in a tough spot; he had to run, and the bases were loaded. He came home and, for some reason, slowed up on the way and then didn\u2019t slide (I see now why…..it was a force out, not a tag play. Sliding doesn\u2019t get you to the plate quicker, just makes you harder to tag). Addison Barger in tough against an excellent lefty, struck out. <\/p>\n
We had some terrific defense. Bo made three excellent plays at short. And Davis Schneider made a fantastic catch in the first on a fly down the left field line. He ran a long way and dived. <\/p>\n
We had 12 hits (the Tigers only had two). Springer had three. Vlad and Bo had two. Schneider, Barger and Jimenez went hitless.<\/p>\n
Jays of the Day: Gausman (.350 WPA), Bo (.370, 2 hits, a walk, 2 RBI, plus the defense), Loperfido (.167, 1 for 2), Springer (.103, 3 for 5, homer), Fisher (.086) and Nance (.086). <\/p>\n
Other Award: Barger (-.214, plus the error), Vlad (-.140, even though he was 2 for 4, with a home run and a walk, and this doesn\u2019t count the base running mistake), Heineman (-.116, 0 for 2, walk), Jimenez (-.107, 0 or 4) and Clement (-.092, 1 for 4). <\/p>\n
The Jays have won 8 of the last 9.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow they go for the four-game sweep of the Tigers. Max Scherzer (1-0, 5.14) vs. Jack Flaherty (5-10, 4.77).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blue Jays 6 Tigers 1 I might be dreaming, but we are 6.5 games ahead of the Yankees.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1219,8072,1218,700,9835,43,7674,44,1432,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-26986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-banter","tag-beat","tag-bluebird","tag-front-page","tag-game-recaps","tag-headlines","tag-jays","tag-news","tag-tigers","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}