Game Recap: EE’s HR Powers Blue Jays Past Boston

After getting a rare excellent outing from their starter last night, the Blue Jays were hoping for Drew Hutchison to take a similar step forward and put up some solid innings. It had been a dismal beginning of the season for Hutchison. He made some strides today although it was still a struggle. He got the W as the offence provided plenty and the bullpen shut things down.

The Blue Jays’ potent offence got on the board early with a 3 walk inning and a sac fly in the first. They loaded the bases twice and should have taken greater advantage of Joe Kelly‘s wildness and errant pick off throw. The mistakes continued for the Sox in the 2nd as Mike Napoli dropped a potential double play ball. He tagged first and Devon Travis would have been out if Joe Kelly didn’t inexplicably interfere with him near the bag. Josh Donaldson then singled home a run. He settled down for a 1-2-3 inning in the 3rd. In the 4th, Kelly’s sloppiness caught up with him as he walked two and then let up a no doubt homer to Edwin Encarnacion. Kelly had a 1-2-3 5th and came back out to record 2 more outs in the 6th. 

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Hutch looked good early getting good movement on his fastball and was hitting his spots better. He struck out 4 and let up just 2 hits/no walks through the first 3 innings. As in his previous starts, things went downhill for Hutchison as he went through the lineup a second and third time. In this start however, he managed to limit the damage to just one run. Drew had to grind in the 4th but escaped a one out, runners on 2nd and 3rd jam with no damage. He scuffled more in the 5th as he let up a run, 3 hits and a walk.

Off of reliever Matt Barnes, Bautista drove in Donaldson with a single in the 6th (run charged to Kelly). Devon Travis broke up his mini-slump with an RBI single in the 7th.

Liam Hendriks put together three fantastic innings of relief. He struck out two and only let up a single and no walks. He only needed 34 pitches for those innings. Roberto Osuna finished things off with a clean 9th.

The Jays are back above .500 with a 16-15 record.

Game notes:
– Excellent base stealing this year continues for the Jays. Now 20/22
– There was an extremely long video review in the 2nd. Clocking in at over 5 mins. Call was overturned
– In spite of scoring a bunch of runs, the Jays fruitlessly loaded the bases 3 times
– Both starters played with fire but Kelly was the one got burnt the most.
– With the Jays starters improving in the last week, so too have the relievers been much steadier.

Next: Jays Nest Podcast 18