12:40 AM Eastern

For the first time in their last 19 games, and just the fourth in their last 25, the Blue Jays played a team that wouldn’t be in the playoffs if the season ended right at this very second.  And they really got the absolute opposite of that, taking on a Mariners squad that had dropped nine in a row, hadn’t hit a home run over that streak, had scored only 11 runs over the nine-game slide and was hitting .186/.233/.238 as a team for the month of July.

So what do the Mariners do?  They score in the first, of course, on a hustle double by Brendan Ryan that was followed by a Dustin Ackley bloop single.  The Jays got two of their own off Michael Pineda in the bottom of the frame on Adam Lind’s first home run since June 27th, but the M’s came back with a four-spot in the second off Brett Cecil – an inning that featured a three-run homer by 9th-place hitter Greg Halman and a solo shot by Ryan, his first in the American League.

Seattle scored twice as many runs in the second inning of this game as they did over the entirety of their four-game sweep at the hands of the Texas Rangers this past weekend.

After that second inning, John Farrell sat down beside Cecil in the dugout and told his young lefty to get his (expletive deleted) together, and Cecil did.  He threw 50 pitches over the first two innings and then 59 more over the next five innings of two-hit shutout, keeping the Jays in the game until they tied it up with a seventh-inning rally that started when Aaron Hill doubled off the wall to lead it off.  After a one-out walk to Corey Patterson, Yunel Escobar doubled to right to score Hill and chase Pineda, and facing Aaron Laffey in the lefty-lefty match-up, Eric Thames smacked a sac fly to left field to cash Patterson.

In came Jeff Gray for Jose Bautista, and the straw that stirs the drink came up huge with his only hit of the night – a laserbeam base hit right back through the box to score Escobar and tie the game.

It was a war of attrition from then on.  The Mariners threatened in the 8th against Shawn Camp after a leadoff single by Justin Smoak and a botched bunt play by Camp himself (picking up the ball at the line instead of letting it try to roll foul), but a double play ball and a pickoff of Chone Figgins at first got the Jays out of it.  Mike Carp doubled to lead off the 11th, but J.P. Arencibia caught him leaning after Figgins pulled back a bunt attempt and picked him off, and the Mariners never threatened again.  The Blue Jays would have threatened a couple of times had second-base umpire Tom Hallion gotten a couple of bang-bang calls right.

The Jays’ bullpen provided seven innings of five-hit shutout, with Marc Rzepczynski retiring seven of the eight men he faced between the 11th and 13th.  Casey Janssen, just activated off the disabled list prior to the game, pitched a shutout 14th, walking Ryan around a couple of strikeouts and a ground ball, and wound up getting the win on the legs of Rajai Davis.

Davis came in to the game in the bottom of the 9th, pinch-running for Escobar, and immediately stole second and went to third on Miguel Olivo’s wild throw.  He was stranded there as Thames grounded out, but later punched a 3-2 pitch back up through the middle with one out in the bottom of the 14th, and though Jamey Wright did plenty of checking on him, everyone in the ballpark knew he wasn’t staying at first too long.  Davis stole second, then stole third, and John McDonald hit a full count pitch deep enough into centrefield to allow Davis to score the winning run.

Davis now has 28 stolen bases on the season, having been caught only nine times, despite the fact that his on-base percentage is somewhere around .260.  He really is rather a ridiculous weapon as a baserunner, and if he could only pick it up with the stick, he’d make the Blue Jays an even more dangerous team.

The fact that he hasn’t hit, though, led to Travis Snider getting his first big-league start in centrefield, and Snider was great.  He made every play, including running down a screamer by Mike Carp on the warning track in left-centre and making a sensational diving grab of an Ichiro Suzuki liner on which he had to come in and to his left.  There shouldn’t be any hesitation in throwing Snider back out there the next time the opportunity arises, but that means sitting Davis.  Although, Davis sat to start this one and still had a massive impact on the game.

By the way, the Blue Jays improved to 7-0 at home in extra inning games with this win.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The JaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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We didn’t have a lot of time, so we didn’t really get to talk about the huge news of the day, which is that the Blue Jays announced they’ll retire Roberto Alomar’s number 12 in a special ceremony on July 31st recognizing his induction into the Hall of Fame. It’s a tremendous honour, and richly deserved.  Alomar is the first Blue Jays player to have his number retired (Jackie Robinson’s 42 is retired by all major-league teams), and he’s also the first player to make it to Cooperstown based in large part on his accomplishments in Toronto.  Yes, Dave Stieb, Tony Fernandez, Roy Halladay and Carlos Delgado were all great Blue Jays – and Halladay may well get the same honour if and when Cooperstown comes calling for him – but Alomar is the only Blue Jay about whom one could ever say this:  He was arguably the greatest player at his position in the history of the game.  It was a definite treat to be able to watch him ply his trade in a Blue Jays uniform for five years.

The series continues Wednesday night with Brandon Morrow making his first-ever appearance against the team that dealt him to Toronto a year and a half ago.  Morrow has hit his stride, with the Blue Jays having won each of his last six starts.  Lefty Jason Vargas will oppose.  We’ll be on the air at 7:00 PM Eastern – join us, won’t you?

Please give me a follow on The Twitter, you can find me @wilnerness590.  It’s also worth your while to follow @tomyoung590, our fine engineer, and @jaysthisweek, as well.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.