sucker punch spring<\/a> for the swings in the weather. Apparently it also applies to the beginning of the season for the Blue Jays, as for the second successive game they took a tough extra inning loss that they even more painful than Wednesday\u2019s.<\/p>\nFacing his former team, Dylan Cease was not particularly sharp, racking up 93 pitches without finishing the 5th inning, finishing with a final line of 3 runs on 5 hits in 4.1 innings. 3 walks against 6 strikeouts. He got into trouble right from the start, walking leadoff hitter Chase Meidroth before Munetaka Murakami drilled a single so hard he had to hold up at first to put runners on the corners.<\/p>\n
Cease did limit the damage to one run, but another walk in the 3rd got him into more trouble in the 3rd. An infield single put two on, followed by a double steal which allowed Austin\u2019s Hay single to plate two runs. The last walk with one out in the 5th inning ended his afternoon. Braydon Fisher held the line in retiring the next two hitters and working around back-to-back singles to start the 6th with a couple of strikeouts sandwiched around a pickoff. Brandon Little and Louis Varland followed with good shutout innings.<\/p>\n
It looked like enough damage might already have been done however, as the Jays bats were largely asleep. Opener Grant Taylor dispatched them in order in the first. Sean Burke was welcomed rudely with a pair of doubles by Addison Barger and Alejandro Kirk to tie the game, but then he largely shut them down for the next 6 innings, working around a few hits here and there.<\/p>\n
Just when it looked like the Jays might be going down as quietly as they did Wednesday afternoon, the White Sox went back to the bullpen for Jordan Leasure and once again the first two batters struck. Ernie Clement singled before Andres Gimenez resurrected the Jays\u2019 hopes with a drive down the right field line for a game tying home run.<\/p>\n
Skipping forward to extras, the Clement moved the Manfred Man over to third with one out but Gimenez struck out. The Jays caught a huge break when what should have been an inning ending roller to third pulled Murakami off the first base bag to plate the run.<\/p>\n
It looked like that might be the decisive break, as Jeff Hoffman came out of the save. Despite the White Sox too moving their runner over with out, Hoffman too got a strikeout to leave them one out away. However, a foul tip off his wrist caused Kirk to depart (hopefully, that\u2019s not the decisive break of the game). Derek Hill immediately challenged replacement Tyler Heineman by dropping down a bunt. Heineman not only didn\u2019t get the out, allowing the tying run to cross, but threw it up the line to put the winning run in scoring position. Setting up former Ray (of course) Tristan Peters to line the game winning single to right field.<\/p>\n
Jays of the Day: The extra inning Manfred Man confounds the raw WPA, as both Ernie Clement (+0.19 WPA) and George Springer (+0.39) have big numbers that are largely undeserved. So instead we\u2019ll go with Gimenez (+0.07) for the critical HR, Varland (+0.11) and Rogers (+0.14) for important shutout relief innings, with hat tips to Fisher (+0.06) and Little (+0.02).<\/p>\n
Boo Jays: By the numbers, Hoffman with the brutal -.800, but that neither accounts for the nature of the runners in extras nor how things happened. Instead, we\u2019ll stick with Okamoto (-0.18) for the 0\/4 golden sombrero, Cease (-0.15), Sanchez (-0.15) with the 0\/5 sombrero, and I think Heineman for the wild throw though coming in cold.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow, weather permitting, the Jays will look to even the series when they\u2019ll send, well, someone to the mound in Cody Ponce\u2019s spot to face old friend Anthony Kay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blue Jays 4 at White Sox 5 (10) A few weeks ago, I came across a humourous yet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,82,218135],"class_list":{"0":"post-581122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-toronto-blue-jays-scores"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581122","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=581122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}