And the Jays win their second straight in Arlington.
Jays 10, Rangers 3. The Jays staked Jesse Litsch to a 5-0 lead before he threw his first pitch. Litsch made it through six low-leverage innings with the winds blowing out of the park all night. First star of the game was Adam Lind, who homered twice – one to left center, the other a moon shot to right – and knocked in runs in each of his first three at-bats. Captain Obvious would like to point out that if Lind ever gets on any kind of hot streak, the Jays will likely be a very difficult team to shut out. Matt Harrison got beat up for the Rangers, allowing seven runs in his three innings. If it's any consolation, he did have a great won-lost record in 2008.
Captain Obvious' Trivial Insight on Win Probability: The Jays' first-inning rally started off with six straight plate appearances of station-to-station baseball. They might as well have drawn six walks in a row.
Escobar leads off with a single: .035
Patterson singles, Escobar to second: .053
Bautista walks, everyone moves up a base: .070
Lind singles, everyone moves up a base: .077
Rivera walks, everyone moves up a base: .066
Arencibia walks, everyone moves up a base: .054
So, if you open a game with a billion walks in a row, from a WPA perspective the most important one is the fourth one, the first RBI walk. It makes sense – the first walk puts a runner on first; the second one effectively puts a runner on second; the third one, on third, and so on, doing progressively more damage until the fifth one which drives in an insurance run. This... is kinda dry and unsurprising, but I hadn't thought of it before, and there wasn't much to talk about from last night's game, so there it is.
I guess I could mention John Farrell's egalitarian bullpen usage. Farrell pulled Litsch after six innings and 92 pitches, with a 10-3 lead and the 9-1-2 hitters due up. Okay, fine, get him out of there with a pat on the back for a quality start. Fair enough. But Casey Janssen, Shawn Camp and Frank Francisco pitched one inning each, with 11, 6 and 15 pitches respectively. You'd think with a 10-3 lead and no off days in sight, and Jo-Jo Reyes pitching tomorrow night in a difficult ballpark, it might make more sense to rest as many pitchers as possible instead of getting everybody involved. Minor point, but I would've played it a bit differently. I agree that giving Francisco a low-leverage inning was a good idea.
Scuffling Travis Snider had a bloop single and a walk. He's supplanted Juan Rivera as the Jays' official deer in the headlights, though he's got a different style; he looks out of control where at times Rivera looked totally impassive. At this rate I don't think Snider's going to get another hit all year, and a .070/.120/.180 line would be a pleasant surprise. We should probably just trade him for Jeff Francoeur or Emmanuel Burriss while the trading's good. Or a first-round draft pick. (Lottery protected, of course – gotta be realistic here.)
Okay, so I'm no good at this reverse jinx business. Though seriously given Snider's struggles I'd probably pencil him in for an 0-4 tonight against hard-throwing lefty Derek "The Dutch Oven" Holland, who's taken a few more baby steps toward the breakout year everybody expects from him. Jo-Jo Reyes looks to build on his very respectable last start, in which he went seven innings against Tampa. Rangers -180, Beer Club is tonight, first pitch 8:05.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20110427091019100