Smoak’s power helps salvage game, series
BOSTON• Early in a steamy matinee, the gloom hung around the Blue Jays as thick as the humidity at historic Fenway Park.
And then the Smoak show really turned up the heat.
Another terrific day at the plate from Blue Jays all- star first baseman Justin Smoak helped salvage a game on Thursday and quite possibly a road trip that was careening towards disaster.
Two home runs and an RBI single by Smoak helped the Jays overcome an early 3-1 deficit and race to an 8-6 win over the AL East leading Red Sox and thus earn a 2-2 split in the four-game Fenway affair.
“It’s exciting,” Jays reliever Dominic Leone said of Smoak’s sizzling season. “He’s clearly hot, he’s seeing (the ball) well. It’s always good for us to have a guy that’s really swinging it and produce runs at any point. Any time he comes up he’s a threat.
“We have a ton of those guys in the lineup,’’ said Leone. “We’ve got to get them rolling and hopefully they follow Smoak’s footsteps.”
While not necessarily meant as a challenge by Leone, the pitcher had a point. The Jays offence is a mere minnow compared to what it once was — especially when it comes to the power — and if the team is going to a launch a meaningful winning streak, it will need the bats of Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista to boom once again.
Smoak is the lone semblance of consistency in a weak Toronto order, one that has been held to a measly one run or less 15 times already in July. Entering Thursday’s game, the Jays had a shockingly poor run differential of minus 74, tied with Oakland for the worst in the American League.
But the switch- hitting Smoak continues to be the outlier in that offence. He hit one shot over the wall in right field and another over the Green Monster in left. Home runs 25 and 26 continued his personal best season in that category and three RBI gave him 62 setting another personal best.
“It’s just one more good (day) in the season,” Smoak said. “I’m just going to try to keep my head down and keep going.”
It was the sixth multi- homer game of Smoak’s career and the second of the season, the only Jays hitter who can make that latter claim. His 20 multi-RBI games rank Smoak second in the AL in that category.
“That was a big, big game it really was,” said Jays’ manager John Gibbons, who was clearly worn down from tough defeats the previous two nights. “Any time the starter comes out earlier, it’s going to turn the game and everyone’s going to have to pitch.”