A Wild One

I can't say I watched all of last night's game against the A's but I did watch the first few innings.  Tuesday nights are movie night with the wife so baseball takes a back seat.  For the first two batters of the evening, it looked like A.J. was going to cruise but then he gave up back to back hits and one run scored before he got out of the first.  After Vernon Wells put the Jays up 3-1 in the bottom of the first, I thought A.J. would settle down and the Blue Jays would cruise to a victory.

It took about two batters into the second inning to change my thinking.  The A's were hitting A.J. all over the park, he couldn't locate any pitch but his fastball and I knew we were headed for another A.J. meltdown on the mound.  Five runs later and the Jays were down 6-3. 

The Jays' bats were facing Chad Gaudin who was fresh off the DL in place of an injured Rich Harden so I had confidence they could come back but I was concerned of whether the Jays could stop the A's bats and keep the game in range.  Well I missed the rest of the game and all the fireworks!  The Jays bats continued to hit, putting up eight runs but Brian Tallet struggled and Accardo couldn't keep the game tied and they ended up dropping the first game of the series.

What was encouraging was that the team kept battling and could have easily won the game.  What was discouraging was Burnett's awful start and the bullpen not shutting a weak hitting A's team down after the team had taken the lead. 

The Jays need to take the final two games of this series and with the A's starting two rookies in the next two games, they should have the pitching advantage.  Hopefully the bats stay hot and the Jays take the series.  If not, the team will have dropped two of their first three series which would be quite discouraging and kill the buzz this team was getting in the City of Toronto after their sweep of the Red Sox.