Understatement: Josh Donaldson was effective in the Blue Jays’ 9-6 win over the Twins on Sunday (box score).
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Upton Jr. hit an RBI triple past a diving outfielder and continued home on a misplay, completing Toronto’s rally from a five-run deficit and sending the AL East-leading Blue Jays over the Minnesota Twins 8-7 Saturday.
Trevor Plouffe hit a home run as Minnesota (49-80) saw its losing skid stretch to nine games.
“When those guys get hot, they’re tough”, Albers said.
After the game Donaldson posted a picture on Twitter of him holding up two clear garbage bags filled with ball caps that the grounds crew and Blue Jays mascot Ace had collected from the field.
“Things just snowballed”, Molitor said. “He’s capable of that, we have a few guys who are capable of doing something like that, it’s a rare feat”.
Dozens of fans tossed hats onto the field to celebrate the home run hat trick after Donaldson, the AL MVP in 2015, hit a solo shot off Alex Wimmers in the eighth.
METS 12, PHILLIES 1: Yoenis Cespedes hit a three-run homer, Kelly Johnson had a pinch-hit grand slam and host NY won its sixth in seven games. Following Donaldson’s third homer of the day and fifth in four games, hats poured onto the field. The sellout crowd of 47,485 at Rogers Centre roared as the burly Encarnacion – not known for his speed – bore down on home plate as he rounded third.
“I’ve never had a curtain call before so that was nice”.
I’ll take the Blue Jays here; Estrada has been pitching fairly well lately overall and I’m just following the win/loss trends.
The Cubs’ four-game winning streak ended behind the shortest outing of the season from Jason Hammel (13-7) (see full recap).
“To win championships, you have to beat the teams you should beat, today we were able to do that”, Dickey said. The rookie left-hander made his second career start in Chicago on June 2 and gave up six runs – five earned – and eight hits in five innings while serving up three homers.
Carlos Gonzalez also hit a two-run homer off Petit, his 24th of the season and 200th of his career.
Donaldson made a throwing error in the top of the third that contributed to the Twins’ first run, but he made up for that with a line-drive home run in the bottom half of the inning, smacking a 92 miles per hour, four-seam fastball by Gibson over the left field fence into the second deck for a 2-1 Toronto lead. Troy Tulowitzki also got in on the action, hitting his 22nd home run of the season and going 2-for-4. Twins manager Paul Molitor replaced Santana with Eddie Rosario after the inning, as Santana left the game with an AC joint sprain as a result of the collision with Grossman. Rosario scored when Dickey got the out at first on Kepler’s high chop. Edwin Encarnacion pulled Toronto within one with a sharp RBI infield-single right after. He was safe at second when on Donaldson’s throwing error on a forceout attempt on Brian Dozier’s grounder.
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Minnesota led 5-0 before the Blue Jays began their comeback. Roberto Osuna allowed one run on Dozier’s double and Mauer’s single in the top of the ninth. A day after trouncing the Orioles 14-4, NY moved within 2 1/2 games of them for the second AL wild-card spot.
