The Toronto Blue Jays played game two of a three game set against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at Angels Stadium in Anaheim last night.

The contest was a homecoming for Toronto starter Ricky Romero, who grew up in East Los Angeles and attended Cal State Fullerton.

With Romero’s family in the stands the lefty struggled immensely against the Angels pitching five and a third innings, allowing seven earned runs on eleven hits, walking three and striking out eight.

Perhaps Romero’s nerves got the best of him or perhaps it was a stroke of bad luck because Romero was not hit hard throughout most of the outing. Many of the Angels eleven hits and seven runs off Romero came in a long second inning where the Angels managed fours runs and six hits on a number of weakly hit balls combined with a couple of hard hits off the bat of Mike Napoli & Howie Kendrick and a suicide squeeze play.

Romero righted his ship after the bad second inning hence the eight strikeouts, but he again ran into trouble in the bottom of the sixth inning prompting manager Cito Gaston to go to his bullpen.

It was a rough homecoming for Romero that he needs to shake off which will allow him to come back strong in his next outing.

One person who did have an excellent night was Angels’ starter Ervin Santana, who used a barrage of sliders combined with an over-powering fastball to shred up the Blue Jays lineup.

Santana pitched a complete game, allowing three earned runs on four hits, walking one and striking out ten.

Santana has now pitched two complete games against the Jays in two starts this season as he seems to have the Jays number.

Offensively, the Jays did not do very much due to the outstanding outing from Santana, although they did hit three of their four hits for solo home runs. Jeremy Reed, Aaron Hill & Jose Bautista all homered off of Santana. With the home run Bautista moved into the lead in the American League with fifteen home runs.

Defensively, the Jays did not look sharp allowing three errors in the game, two courtesy of third baseman Edwin Encarnacion who botched a groundball as well as making a throwing error while Hill made his second error of the season.

The bullpen saw another so-so outing from Josh Roenicke, who seems to have problems with his control at times. Roenicke pitched an inning and a third allowing one unearned run on one hit, walking two and striking out three. David Purcey, who was recently called up from Triple A made his 2010 debut out of the Toronto bullpen pitching a spotless inning of work. Purcey looked very comfortable on the mound with his new two pitch combination.

Absent from the game was Toronto leadoff hitter Fred Lewis who was a late scratch prior to the contest. Lewis was dealing with a bunion issue on his left foot and is considered day-to-day as the injury is not of a serious nature. Jeremy Reed will most likely get the bulk of any starts that Lewis misses out on in left field.

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