Angel 3 Blue Jays 4
It was a nail biter into extra innings but the Jays once again found a way to outlast the Angels to take them in extra innings. It seemed like a laugher early but the Angels found a way to tie and their bullpen made it tough to pull ahead.
The game started as a pitching duel with Lauer and Hendricks trading zeros through the first four innings, the only baserunners coming from a first inning walk to Mike Trout and a single in the fourth to George Springer. Jo Adell reached with a double to open the fifth, called out but overturned on appeal, but was stranded there as Lauer continued to induce bad contract.
Gimenez opened up the scoring, singling to left to bring in Will Wagner who opened the sixth with a double and went to third on a sacrifice bunt by Tyler Heineman. Springer singled up the middle to send Gimenez to third, but he seemed to jam his ankle on the way and was replaced by Jimenez. Bichette laced a single into left to bring in another run. Femin came on in relief and got an easy ground ball to set up a double play, but Zach Neto clanked the ball, allowing Springer to come home and keeping runners at first and second with one out. Femin got out of it with a double play ball to keep the score at 3-0.
Lauer looked like he tweaked his leg trying to field a swinging bunt by Trout but stayed in to face Tyler Ward, who hit a long single to knock him out of the game finally. Nick Sandlin came in with no one out and two men on and Adell promptly tied it up with a three-run shot to dead centre field. Lauer gave way to Little who gave way to Yariel who managing to work around based loaded to strike out Adell to get out of the inning.
The game stayed locked until extra innings, when the Jays came to the plate at the bottom of the 10th. Having Straw at second as the Manfred man was a nice advantage. Lukes kept showing bunt but was walked by Sam Bachman. Clement bunted the ball back to Bachman who threw the ball away to first, allowing Straw to score the winning run.
Jays of the Day: Green gets the award (.309 WPA) and Lauer, who pitched a hell of a game and earned his first quality start (.238) and Yariel’s excellent 1.1 innings in relief (.225).
Other Award: Jays won so I never award this on a win.
The Jays will start the second game of this three-game series tomorrow at 3:07pm. Max Scherzer (0 – 0, 4.85 ERA) will face off against Jack Kochanowicz (3 – 8, 5.44 ERA), who was just seven years old the day Scherzer made his major league debut.
Fortunately, the game will return to the normal broadcast partners from Apple.tv, so most people actually get to watch the game.