Game 19 – Finding the Curveball

Well, the Jays finally beat a LH starter. It only took Eckstein of all people to take Robertson deep to put up enough runs and the bullpen made it stick. Not a good showing for Vernon though as he had 3 k’s, all against Robertson.

Until A.J. finds his curveball he is going to have more outings like this. He continually jumped ahead of hitters but then could not finish them off b/c his curveball wasn’t even coming close and the batters were laying off it. He certainly did not stop trying to find that release point for the curveball which caused him to go to a lot of deep counts and drove up his pitch count chasing him after 5. Give him credit though for only giving up 3 runs, enough to grab the win.

Camp looked good in his return to the majors. He had a good spring and was pitching well in Syracuse so he deserved a shot. Apparently the changeup he is now throwing is something he has developed since his last stint in the majors. If it is the extra pitch he needs to be successful, combined with the early success of Carlson the Jays will have that many more quality arms in their crowded bullpen list.

It was a good sign to see Accardo get 3 ground balls, even if one got through. They need him to pitch well to keep away the desire to rush Ryan into pitching on back-to-back days.

Here are the game stats:
Adv+: Hill (2)
P-Adv+: Robertson
NAdv: Rios (6)
P-NAdv: Robertson
WG: McDonald (2)
ME(f): Cabrera