The Blue Jays’ winning streak reaches six after a gritty win at The Trop

Things worth mentioning…

• We’ll start off with arguably the best defensive play we’ve seen so far this season. In the first inning, with the Rays already up 1-0, Lourdes Gurriel saved a run by throwing an absolute cannon from left field to nab Yandy Diaz at home. It was reminiscent of the legendary throw by Yoenis Cespedes back in Oakland a few years ago.

• Shortly after that, we got back-to-back dingers from Teoscar and Vlad, the latter of which was an insane line-drive that was just launched over the fence. Imagine if there were fans in the audience for this? Vlad hit that ball 115.9 miles-per-hour, which is his hardest hit of the season thus far.

• Matt Shoemaker started for the Blue Jays and had himself a pretty solid outing. Given the fact that this was Shoemaker’s third outing against the Rays this season, he and Danny Jansen went with a much different strategy than usual. Shoemaker threw his fastball 63 percent of the time on Friday, which is much more than he generally ever uses it. Shoemaker also saw a slight uptick in velocity, as he reached as high as 93.5 mph with the heater. All told, he went five innings, scattering two runs (both solo homers) while striking out six.

• In the sixth inning, despite the fact that Shoemaker was cruising along fairly nicely and had only thrown 74 pitches, Charlie Montoyo opted to go to the bullpen for Ryan Borucki to face a few left-handed hitters. It didn’t go well. Borucki walked his first two batters and then allowed a double and single, which tied the game. It was Borucki’s first meltdown all season as he’d been virtually unhittable up to that point.
• But, after Borucki, the ‘pen was lights out. Rafael Dolis came in and put out the fire and then A.J. Cole, Anthony Bass, and Thomas Hatch each had scoreless frames before Jordan Romano went out for the save in the bottom of the 10th inning. It was Romano’s first save of his big-league career.
• Also worth mentioning is Cavan Biggio, who had probably his best game of the season. Biggio, who was strangely placed in the eight-hole despite his great on-base numbers, went three-for-three with a walk and the go-ahead RBI in the 10th. He now suddenly has an insanely good .270/.393/.528 slash line for the season. Nobody on this team is better at getting on base than Biggio. It’s weird Montoyo opted to move Biggio down even though they were facing a lefty, but it kinda worked out because he ended up getting to lead off the 10th inning. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯