A big win last night for the Jays, with David Price and James Shields lined up for today and tomorrow a win in game one was important.
Jayson Nix has gone on the DL after Sean Rodriguez repositioned his lower body, Mike McCoy is back up.
Jose Bautista got the Jays to extra innings, he scored all four runs scored in the regulation nine. Rajai Davis started his rehab last night, as did Scott Podsednik and DeWayne Wise. It can't come too soon as Corey Patterson has returned to his being Corey Patterson and his batting average is down to .214.
Bautista was 3-3 with two walks and he finished a single short of the cycle. He was helped by the TBay outfielders and some umpire intervention. He looked to be out to me on a close play at second base, before he scored the Jays first run. But I wanted to focus on the semi-intentional walk that Joel Peralta issued to Bautista in the eighth inning. Bautista came around to score on a double from Edwin Encarnacion. This was a similar situation to the Yankee game on Tuesday when Mariano Rivera semi-intentionally walked J-Bau who again he scored in a key situation. As long as teams pitch around Bautista in close and late situations, and as long as he is willing to walk, he should score some key runs.
How do you know when things are going bad? When a team intentionally walks a player hitting .160 to get to you. Last night Tampa walked Travis Snider to get to Juan Rivera. The move paid off in the eighth but Rivera got his revenge with a hit in the eleventh.
Jo-Jo Reyes was better last night but he wasn't great. In four of the seven innings the lead-off hitter reached base. Other than Sam Fuld, who had three hits, the batting averages for the rest of the lineup were terrible, several were under .200 and most under .250. At the moment that Tampa lineup is not intimidating. The difference for Reyes last night was his better fastball.
Here is Reyes pitch chart from last night, courtesy of Brooks Baseball.
| Pitch Statistics | |||||||||
| Pitch Type | Avg Speed | Max Speed | Avg H-Break | Avg V-Break | Count | Strikes / % | Swinging Strikes / % | Linear Weights | Time to Plate |
| FF (FourSeam Fastball) | 90.65 | 93 | 2.16 | 7.93 | 38 | 28 / 73.68% | 2 / 5.26% | -0.7323 | 0.414 |
| CH (Changeup) | 82.86 | 83.5 | 5.87 | 4.75 | 7 | 6 / 85.71% | 3 / 42.86% | -0.4258 | 0.451 |
| SL (Slider) | 82.82 | 86.5 | 2.12 | -0.91 | 29 | 19 / 65.52% | 7 / 24.14% | -0.6181 | 0.451 |
| CU (Curveball) | 75.80 | 76.8 | -2.04 | -9.16 | 3 | 1 / 33.33% | 0 / 0.00% | 0.0307 | 0.492 |
| FT (TwoSeam Fastball) | 90.03 | 91.6 | 7.06 | 5.27 | 23 | 17 / 73.91% | 0 / 0.00% | 0.9808 | |
And here is Reyes chart from his last start:
| Pitch Statistics | |||||||||
| Pitch Type | Avg Speed | Max Speed | Avg H-Break | Avg V-Break | Count | Strikes / % | Swinging Strikes / % | Linear Weights | Time to Plate |
| FF (FourSeam Fastball) | 90.83 | 92.3 | 2.46 | 11.42 | 24 | 15 / 62.50% | 3 / 12.50% | 0.0689 | 0.418 |
| CH (Changeup) | 83.63 | 84.4 | 6.26 | 7.29 | 8 | 4 / 50.00% | 0 / 0.00% | 1.8928 | 0.453 |
| SL (Slider) | 82.98 | 85.2 | -1.07 | 0.24 | 18 | 8 / 44.44% | 1 / 5.56% | 1.0846 | 0.453 |
| FT (TwoSeam Fastball) | 90.46 | 92.8 | 8.07 | 8.19 | 44 | 27 / 61.36% | 0 / 0.00% | 0.8744 | 0.420 |
Reyes' strike percentage with his fastball was better in this start, up from the low sixties percent to the mid seventies. Also Reyes had 12 swinging strikes yesterday versus four against Boston. Was that related to the relevant strength of the lineups, or was it better pitching by Jo-Jo? Time will tell.
