TORONTO, Ont. – The Blue Jays messed up everybody’s clock by starting their series finale with the Rays at 4:38 p.m. ET on a Wednesday, but it worked!
Here are three things that stood out to me about the win over the Rays:
JOSE, JOSE, JO...
TORONTO, Ont. – The Blue Jays messed up everybody’s clock by starting their series finale with the Rays at 4:38 p.m. ET on a Wednesday, but it worked!
Here are three things that stood out to me about the win over the Rays:
JOSE, JOSE, JOSE, JOSE, JOSE, JOSE
The Blue Jays picked up their first walk-off win of the season, and not only was the winning run driven in by Jose Bautista, but so were the three runs the Jays scored over the first nine innings of the game.
Bautista, who has taken a lot of heat from the fan base for what many perceive as him trying to hit a home run with every swing he takes, did actually hit a pair of big flies in the game, but it was his desperation throw-the-bat-at-a-two-strike-pitch single to right field with two out in the bottom of the 10th that cashed the winning run.
It was a beautiful piece of hitting, and it was almost exactly the same thing that Evan Longoria did to Casey Janssen to lead off the ninth with a double – just exactly what was needed to get the job done.
It was the second straight inning in which Bautista got the job done, too. In the ninth, he led off by taking Fernando Rodney deep to left field for the second of his two homers, forcing the extra frame.
THE REAL MARK BUEHRLE IS STANDING UP
Buehrle had a brutal April, posting a 6.35 ERA and 1.518 WHIP, allowing six home runs in just 28 1/3 innings of work, prompting many Blue Jays’ fans to write off the 34-year-old as unfit to pitch in the A.L. East, at least, and just simply done at worst.
He appeared to hit rock bottom in the third inning of his May 6 start against these Rays in St. Petersburg, when he allowed seven runs including a Grand Slam to Evan Longoria.
Buehrle stayed in that game and threw three shutout innings, helping buy time for the Blue Jays to come back and win, which they did. He followed that with a start in Boston in which he threw seven shutout innings then allowed two runs over six innings in The Bronx against the Yankees.
At Fenway, Darren Oliver allowed one of his runners to score in the eighth, and in New York Buehrle came back out for the seventh and put three straight hitters on, with Aaron Loup coming in to have the last two score.
In this game, Buehrle gave up just two runs on four hits over seven innings of work, and if not for a botched play by Maicer Izturis on a slow roller by Ryan Roberts in the third, it might have been seven shutout frames.
Buehrle has turned things around completely, as one could have expected he would, given his dozen years of 200+ innings with the White Sox and Marlins, so now all the Blue Jays need is for Brandon Morrow to straighten things out and have Josh Johnson come back to have the strong rotation most of us expected this season.
Morrow can get started Thursday night against the Orioles, while Johnson will make his second rehab start Saturday when he takes the mound for the Buffalo Bisons.
HIGHLIGHT IN THE BOOTH
I’m in my 12th season as part of the Blue Jays’ radio broadcast crew, and visitors to the booth – from the north side, at least – are few and far between. But in the bottom of the fifth, Munenori Kawasaki sent a foul pop-up back towards our booth, and your faithful reporter managed to make the grab – although it was a trap against the front ledge and would never have been called a clean catch.
It’s only the second time in those dozen years that there has been a catchable foul ball come my way, and I’m happy to report that I made a successful grab on the other one as well, just last season.
The fact that Kawasaki’s foul ball happened to arrive during an inning in which I was doing play-by-play, though, that was legitimately ridiculous. It’s been a dream come true to make a living in baseball and to be on my hometown team’s broadcast, and now to be doing play-by-play on a regular basis is almost unimaginable.
But to actually catch a ball while calling a big-league game? Seriously. Nuts.
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