Arencibia gets last laugh, sinking Jays with homer

TORONTO • The crowd of 38,000-plus booed when J.P. Arencibia came to bat for the first time. They whooped and hollered when he struck out. That was the way many remembered him.

Arencibia is an official enemy now, and the Rogers Centre fans seemed to relish the fact that they need not hold back out of respect for his status as a member of the home team.

Then, with the score still tight in the seventh inning, the audience emitted a collective groan. Arencibia, just up from the minors, hit a threerun homer off R.A. Dickey to seal a 5-1 victory for the Texas Rangers over his old team, the Toronto Blue Jays.

The blast, just his second of a season spent mostly with the Round Rock Express, broke open a duel between Yu Darvish and the Dickey. Texas led 2-0 at the time, both pitchers having given extraordinary performances to that point.

The Blue Jays (49-48) have lost 12 of their past 15 games. Texas (39-57) won for just the second time in 16 games.

The Jays, struggling mightily to stay in the playoff hunt, are playing 17 straight games against teams whose records were .500 or worse entering Friday’s action. And Texas has fallen with a thud this season. But the presence of Darvish on the mound can change all of that, as he showed with a 12-strikeout masterpiece before wobbling in the seventh.

Four days off apparently did little to resuscitate the Jays’ offence. Or perhaps the lassitude of their lineup had more to do with Darvish than anything else. At any rate, the batting slump that left them limp before the all-star break maintained its grip when play resumed.

The only run Darvish allowed came on a seventh-inning homer by Colby Rasmus.

Dickey, who lost 2-0 to Tampa Bay and David Price in the last game before the break, worked seven innings, allowing five runs — four on homers — and six hits. He struck out seven.

The game was scoreless until the fifth, when Adrian Beltre led off with a home run. Two outs later, Dickey hit Arencibia with a pitch and surrendered a triple to Rougned Odor.

In the seventh, Dickey (7-10, 3.81 ERA) allowed a pair of one-out singles before Arencibia launched a knuckleball into the left-field bullpen.

Earlier in the day, many observers were left scratching their heads when the Jays sent reliever Chad Jenkins to Triple-A Buffalo to make room for lefty Brad Mills on the roster. Actually, the head-scratching started Thursday when Toronto claimed Mills off waivers from the Oakland A’s.

Mills, who has spent most of career in the minors, seemed a perfect fit for the rotation in Buffalo, but because he is out of options, the Jays had to put him on the big-league roster. That left Jenkins, who had been a solid and versatile contributor out of the bullpen, as the odd man out.

So the Jays sent down a proven reliever and added a pitcher who has a 6.98 ERA in 18 big-league games over five years. Whether Mills sticks around for long is doubtful, but manager John Gibbons said he will serve in long relief for the time being. Todd Redmond, who has pitched well in that role, will get opportunities to work in higherstakes situations, Gibbons said.

The manager skirted a question about why Mills was preferable to Jenkins.