Morales blast lifts Jays
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida — Kendrys Morales gave the Blue Jays a much-needed lift after Toronto started the regular season with consecutive losses.
Morales hit his fourth career grand slam, Marcus Stroman pitched 6 13⁄ effective innings and the Blue Jays beat the Tampa Bay Rays 5-2 on Thursday night.
“It was just a matter of time before the guys started heating up,” Toronto manager John Gibbons said.
Morales homered off Blake Snell (0-1) in the third. Stroman (1-0), the MVP of last month’s World Baseball Classic, allowed one run and six hits in his 2017 debut.
“It feels really satisfying knowing that we had two defeats already, and it’s something that is hard to do,” Morales said through a translator. “So I’m just happy that it happened in a win.”
Snell gave up five runs and four hits in 6 23⁄ innings. The lefty struck out five and walked five.
Darwin Barney had a one-out single in the third, and Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista both drew two-out walks before Morales sent an 0-1 pitch into leftcentre field seats for a 4-0 lead.
“I’m upset about the walks,” Snell said.
Toronto didn’t homer in losing both games during a series at Baltimore. The Blue Jays have never gone homerless in their first three games of a season.
The Blue Jays signed Morales to a $33-million US, three-year contract during the off-season to fill the offensive void left by the departure of Edwin Encarnacion, who joined Cleveland as a free agent. Morales hit 30 homers and drove in 93 runs last season for Kansas City.
Toronto went up 5-0 on Barney’s bunt that first baseman Logan Morrison was charged with an error for mishandling in the seventh. Barney had two hits and walked once.
Stroman, who induced three double plays, left after giving up Morrison’s run-scoring single in the seventh.
“I threw a lot of sinkers today,” Stroman said. “I never come in with necessarily a certain game plan. It’s more like I see how everything is working and kind of go from there.”
Joe Biagini replaced Stroman and got an inning-ending double play from Tim Beckham.
Jason Grilli came in for Joe Smith with two on and one out in the ninth and threw a run-scoring wild pitch before getting his first save.
Mariners 4, Astros 2
HOUSTON — Jarrod Dyson hit a tiebreaking RBI single in the ninth inning and Jean Segura drove in a run later in the inning to lift the Seattle Mariners to a 4-2 victory over the Houston Astros.
The game was tied at 2 entering the ninth before Danny Valencia walked with one out and Carlos Ruiz was plunked by Ken Giles (0-1). They were replaced by pinch-runners Taylor Motter and Guillermo Heredia before Dyson’s fly ball landed between left fielder Nori Aoki and centre fielder Jake Marisnick to allow Motter to score and put Seattle on top.
Segura singled with two outs to send Heredia home for an insurance run that made it 4-2.
Dan Altavilla (1-0) pitched a scoreless eighth for the win and Edwin Diaz struck out two in a perfect ninth for his first save.
Mitch Haniger homered in the third and Kyle Seager’s RBI tied it in the sixth to help the Mariners to their first win of the year.