Jays pitching gets beat up, lose to Orioles

Blue Jays 6 Orioles 11

I really don’t want to recap that.

Let’s just say that Marcus Stroman was terrible. 3.2 inning, 10 hits allowed, 7 earned, no walks (because everything he threw was so hittable, who would take 4 pitches), 4 strikeouts. He might have had a little bit of BABIP bad luck, but he gave up more than his share of rockets.

Jose Biagini came in and was worse (faced 5 batters, gave up 4 hits). Chad Girodo faces one batter and gave up a double. Jesse Chavez pitched an inning, gave up 2 hits, including a 2-run homer. It would have been two home runs but Michael Saunders made a great catch, bringing a home run back into the park.

The good:

• Gavin Floyd pitched 2 clean innings.
• Drew Storen loaded the bases, but got out of his inning without a run scoring.
• Troy Tulowitzki was 2 for 4 with a home run and a double. He looked much better at the plate.
• Devon Travis was 3 for 3 with a walk. He had a home run and 2 doubles (and remembered to stop at second on his doubles).

The Bad:

• As mentioned, the pitching. Baltimore has some good batters, if you are missing your spots, they are going to hit you.
• The top 4 in the batting order went 0 for. Ezequiel Carerra, Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion and Michael Saunders each went 0 for 4.
• The game went forever. 3:31 is the official running time. Several ‘reviews’, I guess we won a review getting a safe call overturned a first. Other than that, I don’t think any of the challenges were successful.
• Plate umpire Dale Scott took a foul tip off the ‘you must not touch certain parts of the body while on the field of play’. He had to leave the game, (to go sing tenor with a boys choir I’m sure) causing a long delay while the other umpires fought over which one of them was going to work behind the plate (‘did you see what happened to Dale? I ain’t doing that’).
• Buck Showalter, up by 5, with 2 outs in the 9th, decided the game wasn’t long enough and replaced his pitcher. When they elect me God, moves like that will earn you a ‘go straight to hell card’.
• I wanted a win for Father’s Day.

That ended a 5-game road trip, the Jays went 3-2 on the trip. We are just 3 games back of the Orioles for top in the AL East.

Jays of the Day: Travis (.298 WPA) and Tulowitzki (.150). Nice to see them get some hits.

Suckage: Stroman (-.526), Carerra (-.107, plus he missed a catch at the wall, it wasn’t an easy catch, but he should have made it) and Donaldson (-.107, for 0 for 4 plus he struck out with 2 out in the 7th, when he was the tying run at the plate).

We had 1158 comments in the GameThreads. You would think we’d have other things to do on Father’s Day. Takiar led us to defeat.