But as he struggled with his pitching, he made up for it at the plate, going 3-for-3 with a home run and three runs scored to help the Los Angeles Dodgers outslug the Philadelphia Phillies 10-8.
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He hit a go-ahead grand slam and Toronto held on for a 9-7 win over the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday as the Blue Jays won their fourth straight to tighten their grip on the second wild card spot in the American League.
Routing the Twins, though, was just a warm-up act for the Blue Jays, who have their sights set on first place in the AL East. That quest takes centre stage beginning Friday in the Bronx.
“They’ve got a great squad”, Hunter marveled.
They were transactions that caught the attention of just about everyone in the sport – including CC Sabathia.
He twirled seven innings of five-hit ball in this one. “It’s a better team, no question about that”, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said.
Midway through Paul Molitor’s postgame news conference, Twins baseball communications director Dustin Morse leaned against the wall and inadvertently caused the manager’s office to go dark. “The games are a different magnitude – that’s for sure – but we’ve got some good veterans in that room”.
The Blue Jays have scored 17 runs in their last three games and four or more runs in seven of their last eight games. The Blue Jays answered in the bottom of the first with two runs on the 29th homer of the year by Donaldson, scoring shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who walked. He’s 14 for 32 during a nine-game hitting streak and will look to continue his recent success at Yankee Stadium, where he’s batting.
“We can definitely get our swag back”. Eddie’s started to heat it up these last few games, and that’s big for us. Estrada loaded the bases and Hunter’s sacrifice fly to deep right field brought in Brian Dozier.
Donaldson entered Thursday hitting.292/.358/.566 and is one of the handful of best players in baseball right now. “Those guys can really play, they can really hit the ball”. The defeat saw the Twins slip to 54-51. 500 for the first time since May 2, when they were 12-12.
“We’ve got a big series coming up, that’s not a secret, I don’t think it makes or breaks our season”, Buehrle said. “You’ve got to go out there and have fun and hopefully we’ll get the same results that we have the week I’ve been here”. He has mostly batted seventh (18 times), eighth (19) or ninth (10).
Already leading on Encarnacion’s first double, Toronto made it 2-0 with three straight singles off Kyle Gibson in the third, including Josh Donaldson’s RBI hit. Bautista wasn’t fooled and he roped a double to score Revere and move Donaldson to third base. Jose Bautista followed by grounding into a double play, but Edwin Encarnacion promptly delivered with two-outs once again, smashing a two-run home run to left.
Now that they’ve been Blue Jays teammates for a week, Lowe is even more impressed.
He’s given up two or less earned runs in eight of his last nine appearances to improve to 9-6 with a 3.40 earned-run average. “A game like today, when you have chances, you’d like to see guys take advantage of it”. But you might not know about Kevin Pillar.
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The Twins optioned RHP Tyler Duffey to Triple-A Rochester and designated C Eric Fryer for assignment.
