Things that were good:

• Russell Martin seems fine, despite a sixth inning scare that had Dr. Martinez and Dr. Tabler talking a little too much about broken fingers for me to not think it wasn’t a little irresponsible. Whatever, though. Russell took a moment to shake it off and managed to take an at-bat in the top of the seventh. Salty’s chance will have to wait for another day, I guess. Thank fuck.
• Kevin Pillar seems fine, too. The high flying centre fielder robbed Manny Machado of extra bases — maybe even a home run — with a catch on a dead sprint to the wall, but hit hard and needed a moment before he popped back up. That could have ended worse!
• Justin Smoak had a couple of hits — the only Blue Jays player with a multi-hit game, as O’s starter Dylan Bundy was absolutely painting for most of the night. It’s not a problem until it becomes a problem, and as much as we think Smoak will probably become a problem, no sign of it yet!
• J.A. Happ pitched better than the results he got. Oh, there was an inning where he was getting hit pretty hard, but for the most part he looked like a guy who’ll get a lot of wins if he keeps pitching like this. (The run support will come.)

Things that were bad:

• The audio — especially early on — at least on the Sportsnet feed on MLB.tv. When it wasn’t tape rewind noises it was atrocious O’s fans yelling directly into the mic. Ugh.
• Bad for the Blue Jays? The fact that Dylan Bundy was real good. The Jays went three-up, three-down in five of Bundy’s seven innings, and in a sixth inning — the sixth inning, in fact — he allowed a one out single and followed it up with a pair of strikeouts. His command was there and all his pitches were working. This being the year that Bundy finally starts to make good on all his long ago promise would not be ideal.
• Camden Yards is a joke stadium. The Adam Jones home run to put the Orioles on top was a real wall-scraper. I mean, it would prooooobably have been out to the park at Rogers Centre, too — Camden is 333 feet down the left field line, the ‘Dome is 328 — but don’t tell me that!!!
• Once again the Blue Jays were bad with Runners In Scoring Position, which means that we have to keep talking about this fucking issue. They’re now 1-for-16 with RISP over two games, which I’m not going to say isn’t bad or frustrating or fucking frustrating or fuck, that’s fucking frustrating. But they’re good hitters. They’ll hit.
• Perhaps worst of all is people getting concerned about what they’ve seen in these last two games, as if such tiny samples of data are remotely meaningful enough to fret about. I thought there was lots of good in the lineup, to be honest. A number of balls hit hard, a number of real dogged at-bats. Again, they’ll hit. The runs will come.
• Oh yeah, and at the risk of sounding like a sore loser, holy piss the umpiring left a lot to be desired. No asking for help on Tulo’s check swing in a key at-bat, and pitches that were strikes all night suddenly turning into balls in the ninth? Yeesh. And yes, that last one helped the Jays, but still! A little consistency, my man!

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