Jays’ bats just heavenly against Angels
Encarnacion goes yard, but the biggest bats belonged to the bottom third of the lineup
TORONTO— Safe to say, this was not the lineup John Gibbons had in mind when he rolled into Dunedin for the start of spring training this year.
Back then, with more than a few uncertainties on the pitching side, he could take some comfort in the Murderer’s Row the Blue Jays had assembled.
Yet here, on May 21, in a game against the Angels the Blue Jays needed to win to stop the bleeding, here was the reality: behind a top three of Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, Gibbons had assembled six hitters, none of whom projected to be starters back in February.
Yet, pre-game, Gibbons was making no apologies.
“These are the kinds of games you win,” the Blue Jays manager said a few hours before first pitch.
And so they did, crushing Los Angeles 8-4 to earn an even split in this four-game series.
R.A. Dickey pitched his best game of the season, Encarnacion smashed a three-run home run and the 7-8-9 hitters—Danny Valencia, Ryan Goins and Steve Tolleson — combined for five runs and went five for nine with three walks.
The Blue Jays offence made the most of eight hits against starter Matt Shoemaker, scoring eight runs, seven of them earned. They ended up with 10 hits in all and could breathe a bit of a sigh of relief at the end as they improved to five games below .500.
After giving up 13 earned runs in his last two starts, Dickey surrendered four runs on five hits and walked two. He struck out seven. It was his first complete game since early last July, when he went the distance in a loss at Oakland. The last two Los Angeles runs were a mere afterthought when David Freese hit a two-run home run with two outs in the ninth.
Angels first baseman Marc Krauss, playing instead of Albert Pujols, who was out with a bruised wrist after being hit by a Drew Hutchison pitch the previous night, hit Dickey’s third pitch of the ball game into the right field seats to give Los Angeles a quick 1-0 lead.
The bottom of Gibbons’s makeshift order got that run back plus another in the bottom of the third. Valencia led off that inning by clubbing an opposite-field homer that stayed just fair down the right field line. Goins followed with a ground ball that took a bizarre hop over Krauss’ glove and dribbled into right field for a double. Tolleson then laid down a sacrifice bunt that Shoemaker fielded but his throw sailed off Krauss’ glove, allowing Goins to saunter home with the go-ahead run.