Right-hander Marco Estrada got the start for the Blue Jays on Friday. Toronto Blue Jays relief pitcher Scott Feldman (46) reacts to a three-run home run off the bat of Boston Red Sox first baseman Hanley Ramirez during the seventh inning of a baseball game in Toronto, Friday, Sept.
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The Blue Jays loaded the bases with none out in the third on singles by Saunders and Kevin Pillar and a walk to Upton. He’s kept the ball down, inducing more groundouts instead of trying to strike everyone out. Kyle Jensen hit a two-run jack off of Bumgarner in the third inning, succeeded by a tag-team effort from Joe Panik and Eduardo Nunez to plate a pair of runs in the fourth. The defence behind him was abysmal. With runners on the corners, left-fielder Melvin Upton Jr., dropped a routine fly ball that allowed Betts to score.
– Aaron Hill joined the party with a pinch-hit, RBI single in the ninth.
“Nothing went our way today and obviously it all started with me”, Estrada said. “When your starting pitcher is out there making a bunch of pitches like that, it brings everybody down”.
This will be game two of the set.
The big righty was in trouble only a couple of times.
Porcello, blessed with overwhelming run support all season, was staked to a 1-0 lead in the first, 2-0 in the second and 4-0 in the third.
Donaldson, meanwhile, continued to wilt down the stretch. The Catamounts are 4-0 to start the year and are now ranked number twenty three in the national poll. Red Sox 2B Dustin Pedroia had three hits to extend his hitting streak versus Toronto to 27 straight contests.
After a sweep at the hands of the Yankees this week, Toronto is now (77-62) on the season and have won only 4 of their last 10. “That’s a testament to Russ, and how much he’s able to play through pain for us, for his brothers out there, because he wants to be out there with us competing”. We know what we are capable of.
If you’re a Red Sox fan, that is something to hang you’re hat on.
It is getting close to the post season and the schedule only has 23 games left before the regular season is over, this series is huge for both the Sox and the Jays. He threw seven shutout innings against Boston in April, and in his most recent outing at Fenway in June, he allowed just two hits in eight innings.
“I’ve been so busy this year that I can’t wait”, Ortiz said. “I just tried to stay as into the game the last four days as I could, in case opportunity arose in one of those four games”.
Yet, how likely is that going to happen tonight?
There has been, for some reason, a degree of verbal constipation over the need for the struggling Blue Jays offence to play more “small ball”.
Russell Martin was a notable absence from the Toronto Blue Jays starting lineup on Friday for the start of a critical weekend series against the Boston Red Sox. “Put it this way: we’ve got a good hitting ballclub and everybody’s in their 20s”. “He’s had a tremendous career, he really has”.
A little bit of an understatement.
His 40th at Toronto, a 400 foot shot, came back in May off of Gavin Floyd. Swimmer Penny Oleksiak, who won four medals at the Rio Olympics, threw out the ceremonial first pitch.
“For me, for everybody, it’s a good place to hit”.
“If you get hits, it’s going to be hard to keep you out of the lineup”.
And if Ortiz has not been a big enough pain for Toronto on the field, he also ruffled some feathers off of it earlier this year at the all-star game when he made comments that easily could have been labelled tampering.
Yet a whole lot of baseball people still think there’s something special about the 20-win plateau, even if they acknowledge that the win stat has its shortcomings.
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Encarnacion, a potential free agent after this season, later said he was moved to hear his Dominican countryman sing his praises. But the fact is he’ll allowed three runs or less in 23 of his starts, and considering Boston is now 22-7 in his outings, it’s clear he’s done his share of heavy-lifting too. “He lives on the edges and he was just missing”.
