Yasmani Grandal and Travis Shaw combine for 5 RBI’s

Game Recap | Box Score

In what is now an annual tradition, the Toronto Blue Jays offered up their last two exhibition games to my hometown, Montréal. For the second year in a row, thanks to adjustments to the regular season schedule, the first of two games were on a Monday night. With only 25,000 tickets on sale, the upper deck was closed, but the rest of the stadium was mainly full. While the energy of the first few years was not present, everyone seemed to be there to enjoy this limited opportunity to see the closest thing to regular season baseball.

There was a pre-game ceremony to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the  Montreal Expos, with a series of past players attended. While everyone got a nice round of applause, the loudest cheers were for Larry Walker, Dennis Martinez and the frail, 83-year-old Felipe Alou.

As a part of this annual tradition, the local media decided to spend a bit of time reminiscing about the history of baseball in Montreal and interviewing Stephen Bronfman who is starting to seem bullish on the prospects of a team returning here soon.

With Vlad Guerrero Jr. sidelined with an injury, all eyes were on Bo Bichette, the Blue Jays next most promising prospect. While he didn’t manage the type of heroics Vladdy did the previous year, he did get some serious applause for his pinch-hit first-pitch single to right field.

Thanks to the depth of the Brewers lineup, and the lack of depth in the Blue Jays bullpen, Milwaukee took the lead in the fourth and continued to build on it inning by inning by inning.