Blue Jays: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly against The Mets

The Blue Jays took two games of a three-game set this weekend against the New York Mets while hosting them in Buffalo. Here is a look at the Good, the Bad and the Ugly from the end of their home stand.

The Good
The Blue Jays got an ace-like performance from their number one pitcher on Sunday when Hyun Jin Ryu tossed six strong innings.

Through six innings, Ryu did not allow a walk and struck out seven while allowing eight hits. He was lifted in the seventh inning with a 7-1 lead after throwing 92 pitches, which was the lowest in his last five outings. I think it is a foregone conclusion that the organization does not want pitchers going through the lineup three teams, or surpassing 100 pitches.  It was nice to see him bounce back after being hit around in his last start, he also collected his fourth win of the season.

The hitting disappeared for the weekend, which saw just three players have more than two hits in the series.  Cavan Biggio did lead the team with four hits and batted .333 and was also the only player to have at least two extra-base hits with a pair of doubles.  A case can be made that Biggio has been the team’s MVP this year due to his consistency and versatility in the field.  Biggio collected two walks during the series and became the fast franchise player to 100 walks in his career.

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Santiago Espinal looked really good in Spring Training and again in the summer camp, however received little playing time to start the season.  He has been looking really good of late and led the team in RBIs for the weekend with three, which all came from very timely 3-run double on Sunday.  Espinal finished the weekend 2 for 7 with just one strikeout and some very good defense.

The Bad
After being the poster boy for the last series for this article, Anthony Kay had a rough outing on Friday night.  In only 0.2 IP he allowed six runs (five earned) on four hits and a pair of walks, which ended up raising his ERA by over two runs.  The reason I am not concerned is that he has been very good overall, and should be fine the rest of the way.  In fact, he has only allowed runs in four of his other 11 appearances this season and only one of those were for more than one run (August 23, two runs over three innings).  Just a small blemish on his record that he will put behind him.

The hitting completely disappeared over the weekend.  The team combined for a .232 average and had just six extra-base hits over three games.  The middle of the order struggled as Lourdes Gurriel Jr went just 1 for 11 (home run on Sunday) and Vladimir Guerrero Jr went 2 for 11.  Hopefully the day of rest on Monday will help these guys get going again.

The Ugly
Friday night was not a game you want to remember.  After jumping ahead in the first inning, the Mets scored 18 unanswered runs.  It got the point that Santiago Espinal was brought in to pitch in the ninth inning.  These are types of games that you don’t say anything to the players, they already know how bad it is, you forget about it and move just on.  It looked as though they did just that, as they played tight baseball for the remaining two games of the series and came away with a pair of victories.

The Blue Jays will now have Monday off before going into Yankee Stadium for an extremely important three game set.