This one was close for a while and then it wasn’t.

Things worth mentioning…

• Remember when Aaron Sanchez threw heat and pitched deep into games? I do. I’m not sure what’s going on with him, but this doesn’t seem good. Sanchez failed to pitch at least six innings for the fifth consecutive start, giving up nine hits and seven earned runs over five innings, striking out four. To make matters worse, he’s still about 3 MPH slower than what we’ve come to expect from him. Today his four seamer averaged 92.7 and topped out at 94.7, and his sinker averaged 92.8 and maxed out at 95.3. In 2016, the season that was supposed to be his breakout year, those two pitches both averaged 95.5. His new changeup has looked good, but pretty much everything else about Aaron Sanchez in 2018 has been a big step back from two seasons ago.
• Even more bad news on the injury front as Josh Donaldson left the game in the fifth inning with left calf tightness. He reached base and then looked horrible running to third on Justin Smoak’s double and was lifted from the game for Gio Urshela. Judging by this Hazel Mae tweet it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a huge issue, but nobody’s injury has seemed bad this year, so we’ll wait and see.
• In the top of the seventh with the game pretty much already out of hand, Devon Travis and Teoscar Hernandez hit back to back triples, which according to Blue Jays PR on Twitter, hasn’t happened since Brett Lawrie and Omar Vizquel did it back in 2012. The Blue Jays now have nine triples on the year after only hitting five last season. Last month this was something that I cared about, but life is meaningless and time’s a flat circle and Boston and New York are going to run away with the East so why should any of us care, anyway?
• Uh…speaking of Devon Travis, he’s hitting .291 since being recalled from Buffalo. It’s just been 17 at-bats and you really can’t come to any conclusions from this, but I didn’t want to end this recap with something nihilistic. See you guys tomorrow when the Blue Jays will try to even this series up with Marco Estrada and his 5.40 ERA tries to silence one of the hottest lineups in the league!