Jays win and take over first place in the AL East

Orioles 1 Blue Jays 9

First place. The air smells nicer up here.

For the first 4 and a half innings, that wasn’t much fun.

Then we scored 7 in the bottom of the 5th, and suddenly it was great fun.

J.A. Happ pitched as good a game as you are ever going to see of of him. He gave up a solo homer, in the 2nd inning, and we had a few innings of worry that that was going to cost us, but that was the only bad moment of his 7 innings.

He allowed just 3 hits (the home run by Pedro Alvarez, on a pitch that really wasn’t all that bad), 3 walks and 11 strikeouts. He was almost untouchable.

I liked that Gibby sent him out to start the 8th inning, and then pulled him when the leadoff hitter singled, so that the fans could show Happ their appreciation.

Joe Biagini came in, gave up a couple of weak hit singles. Then, with the bases loaded, Jonathan Schoop, barely touched a pitch, having the ball bounce just in front of the plate. Biagini flipped it with his glove hand home to get the force at the plate, then got Manny Machado to hit a soft fly to center.

Brett Cecil came in to strikeout Chris Davis to leave the bases loaded.

Jesse Chavez pitched a quick 9th.

We didn’t do much offensively, until the big 5th inning. We did load the bases, with 1 out, in the first but couldn’t score and we had worries that that was going to be our only chance.

Then came the 5th:

• With 1 out, Devon Travis homered to tie the game.
• Jose Bautista and Josh Donaldson walked (it looked like Yovani Gallardo (who was very good until that point) really didn’t want to pitch to them).
• Edwin Encarancion doubled, giving us a lead.
• The O’s intentionally walked Michael Saunders (kind of a curious move) and brought in reliever Mychal Givens to replace Gallardo.
• Givens walked Troy Tulowitzki, bringing in our 3rd run.
• Russell Martin doubled in our 4th and 5th runs of the inning.
• After a Melvin Upton strikeout (and he broke his bat over his knee), Kevin Pillar doubled in our 6th and 7th runs.

We scored 2 more runs in the 7th. A Saunders walk and doubles by Martin and Pillar bringing our total to 9.

In all we had 10 hits and 7 walks. Just the 1 home run, but 5 doubles, 2 each for Martin and Pillar and 1 from Edwin.

The only starter not to reach base was Upton, going 0 for 4 with a strikeout.

Jays of the Day: Happ (.158 WPA), Travis (.170 2 doubles, 4 RBI), Edwin (.122, 2 for 5) and Donaldson (.113 on a 2 for 3 with 2 walks).

No Suckage Jays. Upton had the low mark at -.061.

We had some good defense too.

Let’s get the sweep tomorrow.

We had 1469 comments in the GameThread. Eric H led us to victory again.