Blue Jays: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Atlanta

The Blue Jays just finished a three game set with the Atlanta Braves that saw them drop two games and now fall to 4-6 on the young season.  They head into Boston Friday night, but here is a look at the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly during the series against the Braves.

The Good
When your top prospect is looking good you should always get excited.  Nate Pearson had his second career start on Thursday night and while the stat line of three earned runs over five innings doesn’t look great you have to look at how he pitched overall.  In the top of the first inning, he allowed a walk to Dansby Swanson, which was followed up by a home run from four-time All-Star Freddie Freeman.  Pearson settled in after that retiring 8 of his next 9 batters, which included four strikeouts.  Pearson finished off pitching five innings, allowing one more run on a sacrifice fly.  Pearson has looked very good so far in his two outings.

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While Pearson is the Blue Jays top prospect playing on the team this year, last year it was Vladimir Guerrero Jr.  VGJ has struggled to start this season but had some signs of breaking out this week as he had three doubles in 11 at-bats this past week.  Of those three doubles, two were hard-hit balls, one was a hard ground ball down the line and the other was a deep shot to right-centerfield.

The bullpen has been nothing short of remarkable so far this year.  Ryan Borucki had one appearance where he struck out both batters he faced, Jordan Romano had two appearances and did not allow a base runner over two innings and Anthony Bass picked up his second save of the season during the series.  The team also got a two-inning relief performance from Anthony Kay where he struck out three and walked just one batter.  The team has a very good core of arms in the bullpen.

The Bad
The glaring mark would be the hitting on the club.  The Jays did not have one player with more than three hits in the series and if you take away Guerrero Jr, Lourdes Gurriel Jr, and Bo Bichette the rest of the club went 6 for 59 (.102) with one extra-base hit.  Randal Grichuk struggled in his return to the club as he struck out five times in his 10 at-bats.  The club still has not been able to find that fourth outfielder, as well Brandon Drury’s time has to be coming to an end.  After going 0 for 5 in the series, Drury is now batting .095 on the season and .205 since the start of 2018 (NYY and TOR).

Charlie Montoyo has elected to pitch Wilmer Font in four of the teams’ last six games and Font has surrendered runs in his last three appearances.  On Tuesday night, Font gave up five hits and four earned runs in one-third of an inning.  Thursday night, the club came rallied and score two runs to tie the game in the seventh, but in the ninth Montoyo put Font into the game in the bottom of the ninth.  Font would give up a walk-off home-run and the Jays would lose again.  In his last three appearances, Font has been credited with one innings pitched, allowing six earned runs on nine hits (including a home run and two doubles).

The Ugly
The ugly for the week would be Rowdy Tellez scoring on a Teoscar Hernandez RBI on Thursday night.  If you haven’t seen his slide at home plate give the twitter feed below a look, it would be the opposite of pretty.

What are you looking to see from the Blue Jays in the upcoming weekend series with the Boston Red Sox?