Purcey Dominates, as Scutaro Goes Down for Season + Webchat with Ricky Romero.

The Toronto Blue Jays began the first game of their final home stand for the 2009 season with a 9-2 victory over the visiting Baltimore Orioles, riding the young arm of prospect David Purcey, while manhandling Orioles youngster Chris Tillman.

Purcey showed why the Blue Jays selected him 16th overall in the 2004 Major League Baseball Entry Draft on Monday evening.

Purcey easily pitched his best game of the season, lasting 7.2 innings, allowing one earned run on four hits, while walking four and striking out four.

The win was the first for Purcey in more than a year. Purcey began the year in the Blue Jays rotation, but was demoted after five rough starts, spending most of this year with Triple A Las Vegas.

Aside from the four walks, David Purcey was outstanding last night against Baltimore.
The Blue Jays offense was on fire in this game scoring nine runs in total, four of which came off Orioles starter Chris Tillman (5IP, 6H, 4R, 4ER, 3BB, 5K) while the other five came of relievers Cla Meredith (0.1IP, 2H, 1R, 1ER, 0BB, 0K) & Bob McCrory (0.2IP, 2H, 4R, 4ER, 3BB, 1K).

Home runs came courtesy of Lyle Overbay in the bottom of the sixth inning off Tillman and via John McDonald also in the sixth off Meredith.

Travis Snider had a three RBI game, while Adam Lind and Edwin Encarnacion both contributed with two RBI days of their own.

Some bad news for Blue Jays fans was announced on Monday as starting shortstop and one of Toronto’s mainstays on the season Marco Scutaro will miss the remainder of the 2009 season. AN MRI revealed a tear in Scutaro’s right heel.

Scutaro left Sunday’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays after hearing a pop in the area.

Scutaro revealed to the media that the pain in his heel has been bothering him since July, but he has been playing through it. The nagging pain was diagnosed as plantar fasciitis.

Scutaro, a free agent at the end of the season is having a career year batting .282 with 12 home runs and 60 runs batted in, while scoring 100 runs out of the lead off spot for Toronto. Scutaro has also been solid defensively boasting a fielding percentage of .984, while making 10 errors in 143 games.



Finally, today marks the day where fans of the Toronto Blue Jays can chat with promising young rookie starter Ricky Romero. Romero will be chatting with fans live today @ 2:30pm EST sharp. If you would like to chat with Romero visit the following link for details:

http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/fan_forum/chat.jsp?c_id=tor



In other baseball news:

The Houston Astros have fired manager Cecil Cooper.

Third base coach Dave Clark will take over as interim manager.

Houston went 171-170 under Cooper in his tenure.

Houston general manager Ed Wade said Clark would be considered a candidate during the search for a new manager.

Cooper is the fourth manager fired his season, following in the footsteps of Colorado's Clint Hurdle, Arizona's Bob Melvin & Washington's Manny Acta.