Things worth mentioning…

• Saturday night felt like the true arrival of George Springer. He had a goose egg in his first game, got on base a few times in his second, but exploded in his third. Springer grounded out in the first inning and appeared to re-aggravate his injury as he hobbled to first base. Despite that, Springer stayed in the game and was key to the comeback effort. He hit a two-run dinger to cut Atlanta’s early lead to 4-2 and then hit the game-tying homer in the seventh inning. Springer is now 3-for-12 with a couple of dingers and three walks as a Blue Jay. Let’s just hope he can stay on the field.

• The other big story from Saturday was the Blue Jays bullpen. Milone got pounded for four earned runs over two-and-one-third innings but, after that, the bullpen pretty much slammed the door. Trent Thornton allowed a solo bomb to Ronald Acuna but that was the only damage from the non-Milone arms. Tim Mayza, David Phelps, Tyler Chatwood, Rafael Dolis, and Jordan Romano didn’t allow the Braves to do much of anything from the sixth to the tenth inning. Seeing Romano have a three up, three down inning with the extra-inning runner on second in the tenth was really encouraging.
• Finally, the Blue Jays walked things off in the tenth as Vlad Jr. worked a walk and the Braves oddly opted to also issue a two-out free pass to Cavan Biggio (who was up 3-1 in the count but was 0-for4 with three strikeouts in the game) in order to face Randal Grichuk. With the bases loaded, Grichuk smacked a single into centre field to end the game. Again, I have no idea why pitching to Grichuk over Biggio was the play in that situation, but I’ll take it.

• After the game, we got some unfortunate news as both Tommy Milone and Alejandro Kirk are heading to the 10-day Injured List. The really unfortunate news here, of course, is Kirk, who was really heating up with the bat and seemed to be in position to take on the brunt of the load behind the plate, as Danny Jansen can’t hit anything these days. Milone is more than likely a case of Left Arm Shittiness, as the Blue Jays want to give him a break but don’t want to expose him to waivers.

• Ross Stripling will come off the IL in place of Milone but we aren’t yet sure who will come up to replace Kirk. Reese McGuire cleared waivers after being designated for assignment back in March and isn’t on the 40-man roster. That leaves the Blue Jays with rookie Riley Adams, who’s headed to play Triple-A with the Bisons, as the most likely call-up, unless they opt to re-add McGuire to the roster.
• Also, as unfortunate as it is to lose Kirk, it’s really, really nice that we didn’t wake up to news that Springer was back on the IL.