Game 83 – Pitcher’s Duel?

Great game from Burnett giving up just 4 hits and no runs over 7 innings. He did walk 4 (1 intentional) but struck out 11. The problem is those walks and strikeouts drove up his pitch count to 119 and forced him out. He pitched out of a 1st and 2nd none out in the 4th (although by his own doing w/back-to-back walks) and he pitched around a leadoff double in the 7th.

The Jays didn’t exactly give Burnett much support, taking until the 6th to score a run and then adding nothing more. The Jays struggles against lefties continued. They did hit 4 2B’s (Rios had 2 of them) in the game but only managed the 1 run in large part thanks to their 0 for 13 w/RISP. They even had 2 leadoff 2B’s but both times the next batter (Barajas and Overbay) went down looking. In the 3rd they had 1st and 2nd none out but Eckstein hit into a DP.

The Braves for their part were not much better going 0 for 8 w/RISP. In particular McCann went 0 for 4, 3 of which came w/RISP. It was also a tough game for Brandon Jones going 0 for 4 w/3 strikeouts.

That is a combined 0 for 21 w/RISP and all 5 times the teams had a runner at 2nd w/none out the next hitter failed to advance them.

The Jays did not give Teixera a chance to come up w/a hit w/RISP as they intentionally walked him twice when he came up w/a runner at 2nd and 1st base open. I wasn’t a big fan of the 1st intentional walk in the 6th although it wasn’t unreasonable. With McCann hitting behind Teixera, either way Burnett is going to have to face a lefty and there is not much of a dropoff between the two hitters. So I’d rather just go after Teixera and try to get him rather than put another runner on base, especially in a tie game. Plus if you fall behind Teixera you can always just decide to walk him then. However, in the 8th w/Downs on the mound it makes sense to face McCann rather than the switch hitting Teixera.

Always nice to see Ryan come in and have a quick 1-2-3 inning to save it. It is funny how quickly people turn on closers when they have a couple bad games in a row like Ryan did at the start of June. It certainly was a bad week for Ryan w/a couple blown saves and losses but now he is once again pitching great. The problem for closers is when they struggle, their struggles are coming at a very visible time in the game, but it is going to happen. All closers are going to blow a few games every year (w/the exception of that one amazing year by Gagne).

On with the stats:
NAdv: McCann, Francoeur, Barajas (4), Eckstein (4), Overbay (9)
P-NAdv: Reyes 3, Burnett 2 (9)
WG: Lillibridge, McDonald (5)