Blue Jays “Steals” a Victory Last Night
If I didn’t know the outcome of last nights game and was told that Jacoby Ellsbury collected three more hits , David Ortiz hit a home run and Adrian Gonzalez hit two homers, I would have thought that the Sox won in a landslide. As we now know that was not the case. The Sox lost a 10 inning battle to the Jays, 7-6.
Gonzalez’s team leading 6th home run came in dramatic fashion, an opposite field blast in the ninth inning to even the score at 6 all. Toronto’s Rajai Davis, took the game over in the bottom of the 10th. Davis worked Matt Albers to a 3-1 count. The last thing Albers wanted to do was walk the potential winning run to first. Instead, the speedy Davis singled up the middle. That single soon turned into a triple, when Davis promptly stole second then on the next pitch swiped third easily. Setting up the game winning sacrifice fly off the bat of David Cooper. Cooper, who entered the game as a pinch runner in the bottom of the sixth, also hit his first ever major league home run of Daniel Bard in the bottom of the eighth. That homer gave the Jays a brief lead of 6-5 that was quickly offset by Gonzalez’s game tying shot in the ninth.
What Davis did was take advantage of one of the Sox’s glaring weaknesses, Jason Varitek‘s weak and inaccurate arm. Varitek called for a pitchout and was still unable to stop the fleet footed Davis from stealing second. For the record, I am not saying the result would have been different if Jarrod Saltalamacchia were behind the plate. At some point in time this issue is going to have to be addressed.
This was the fourth time this year the Sox had an opportunity to reach the .500 plateau and all four times they have come up short. They have one more game with the Jays before the Sox raid Yankee stadium for a three game series. It would have been more exciting if the Sox were above .500 before they stomp all over the Yankees.
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