{"id":3429,"date":"2013-08-07T15:48:45","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T19:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=3429"},"modified":"2013-08-14T14:52:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T18:52:38","slug":"jays-end-season-on-high-note-ahead-of-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/jays-end-season-on-high-note-ahead-of-playoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Jays end season on high note ahead of playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Doner<\/p>\n

The Aurora Blue Jays ended their regular season on a high note with a convincing 9 \u2013 2 win against the Barrie Angels last week.<\/p>\n

In order to keep their starting pitchers fresh for the upcoming playoffs, the Jays rolled out some variety, including some who hadn\u2019t pitched in years.
\nGetting the start for the Jays was Nathan Drury who pitched two innings. Although he got into a bit of trouble with a bases loaded situation, the defense backed him up and converted a double play to hold Barrie to a single run in the first.<\/p>\n

Following Drury was regular starter Ian Milne, who was credited with the win for his one inning of work in the third when the Jays took a two run lead.
\nAndrew Bukovec, Ryan Lewis, Chris Bloom and Chris Leslie each pitched an inning to finish off the game.<\/p>\n

Lewis and Bloom, in particular, hadn\u2019t pitched in years, but both said it was fun to get out there and hurl a few pitches.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was fun. It was good to have a game where we could take the pressure off a little bit and have some fun,\u201d said Bloom. \u201cIt\u2019s been probably seven years since I have pitched, so it was kind of fun for me and \u2018Louie\u2019 [Lewis]. We\u2019ve been barking and joking about it for quite a while, so it was good to get in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bloom not only pitched well, but made a highlight reel pickoff at second base.<\/p>\n

\u201cI channeled teammate Ian Milne there,\u201d he said laughing. \u201cIt was probably the selfish thing to do, but when you get the opportunity to pick someone off when you haven\u2019t pitched in seven years, I couldn\u2019t pass up the opportunity to spin and fire one to second.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the fact the team had little riding on the game against Barrie; the Jays know how they need to be in top form with playoffs rapidly approaching.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re feeling confident,\u201d said Bloom. \u201cWe know it\u2019s going to get serious really quick and that from here on out there\u2019s really no breaks, but over the last few years we\u2019ve kind of learned the ability to kind of lock in when we need to, so I think we\u2019re all excited and turned in the right direction after stumbling a bit out of the gate this season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis agreed that the Jays seem to be running a well oiled machine and as a veteran of the team, said it was neat to see the team grow together over the years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been amazing to grow with these guys and see the progression of everybody maturing; it\u2019s fun to be a part of,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After being knocked out in the first round last year, Lewis thinks the team will come in with a lot of knowledge about what it takes to move on.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re looking good. We\u2019re lucky that we have the amount of guys that we have to fill in all the positions and I\u2019m confident now with our big pitching staff and the team that we\u2019re playing, we match up well against them, so we\u2019re hoping to make the finals this year.\u201d
\nBloom agreed that the matchup against Clearview will be a good one for the Jays.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always a tough park to play in and usually we play early games [no lights], so it\u2019s tough to get guys to the park on time, but they\u2019re a good team, they\u2019re in the playoffs and they\u2019ve won some big games this year,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve always given us a run for the money, so it should be a pretty good series. I\u2019m expecting that our team will lock together and we\u2019ll all go out and do our job. If we do that, we shouldn\u2019t have too much trouble with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Jays playoff schedule is as follows: Game 1 \u2013 Tuesday, Aug. 6, 7.30 p.m. Game 3 \u2013 Thursday, Aug. 8, 7.30 p.m. and if necessary game 5 on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 7.30 p.m. all at Lambert Willson Park.<\/p>\n

For a full schedule, stats or team info, visit www.ndbl.ca.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aurora Blue Jays ended their regular season on a high note with a convincing 9 \u2013 2 win against the Barrie Angels last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-Tj","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-14 17:21:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/2013-08-07-06.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}