Game 85 – Is that allowed on Canada Day?

It was not a good start from Litsch even though he only gave up 3 runs (1 earned). I’ll give Litsch credit he seems to have quite a few of these starts always finding ways to give up hits but keep the runs down. It’s what he did last year and that’s why I wasn’t sold on him coming into this year, but he other than a recent rough patch he has doing ok this year. Of course, all those hits lead to more batters faced and therefore more pitches and that meant Litsch was done failing to get through 6.

The Jays actually scored some runs today, but the bullpen let them down. First it was Carlson who gave up a 2-run HR to Beltre in the 7th and then it was Downs who gave up a solo HR to Sexson in the 8th that tied it. After Downs walked 2 of the 1st 3 hitters (1 intentional) in came Camp to face Bloomquist. And it happened again, another walk-off loss for the Jays as Bloomquist singled to left-center. That is now 7 for those of you counting, and I am cause I’ve had to sit through all of them. At least there were only 24,586 people there and a number of them were Jays fans, not quite the same as NY, BOS, and LA.

The Jays really only did anything offensively in 2 innings, scoring 3 runs in each of the 4th and 6th. The Jays ended up 4 for 10 w/RISP. They were led by Wells and Lind, each w/3 hits (2 1B’s, and a 2B). Zaun would have joined them at 3 hits in the game if not for the horrible mistake by Wells. With Wells at 2nd and 1 out Zaun hit a line drive over the SS’s head for what should have been a base hit, but Wells retreated to 2nd base as soon as it was hit and didn’t look to see whether Betancourt caught it. By the time Wells realized it got over his head and into the OF he couldn’t make it to third. Therefore it goes down as a FC7-5.

Now I know there were none out but I think it was a bad hold of Rios in the 4th on the Wells double. It looked as though Rios was going to score easily.

Having watched Ibanez play a few games now, I have to say he takes a lot of bad routes to balls. And when you only have average speed you can’t afford those kinds of mistakes.

Let’s check the stats:
Adv+: Wells (2), Zaun (2), Lind (1)
P-Adv+: Rowland-Smith, Corcoran 2
NAdv: Rolen (5), McDonald (1)
P-NAdv: Rowland-Smith, Corcoran
ME(r): Wells (1)
ME(f): Litsch (1)