Jays celebrate with their bats against Royals
Amidst all the hype and excitement surrounding two major trades in the past three days, the Blue Jays had a four-game series to play with the Kansas City Royals. Not just another mid-summer series, but four games with the defending American League champions.
There was something to prove for the home side and its newly rocketboosted roster that now features Troy Tulowitzki and David Price. Mostly, the proving had to be done by the every day roster, sans Price, who will be in town Friday and won’t pitch until Sunday or Monday.
There’s essentially no room for a series loss to the Royals. The Jays entered Thursday at .500, seven games off the lead in the American League East. The 5-2 win over Kansas City was the first in a 60-game push for the post-season, either via a division title or a wild-card berth.
The Jays mounted a three-homer attack over the first four innings to support starter Marco Estrada.
“What a team,” Estrada said. “(GM Alex Anthopoulos) put together a great team. We all thought we were really good before this, and now we just got better. We’re all pretty excited and ready to get this thing going.”
The major-league trade deadline is 4 p.m. Friday, and there’s still the opportunity to add another piece. But this is the lineup that has been set in motion toward what fans hope will be an end to the longest playoff drought in baseball — since 1993.
Toronto’s league-leading offence is likely to lead the way if that push is successful; it showed another reason why Thursday by taking apart a very good, hard-throwing lefty in Danny Duffy.
After falling behind 2-0, Toronto scored once in the first on a sacrifice fly, twice in the second on a Dioner Navarro homer, and once in each of the following innings on solo shots by Russ Martin and Josh Donaldson.
Navarro’s homer marked the 12th consecutive game after the all-star break in which the Jays had at least one homer, the first time any Jays offence has accomplished that feat.
That’s as an impressive statement for an offence as good as there is in the league right now, including the Royals, who are extremely impressive. Toronto has now out-homered its opposition 75-49 on home turf.
Pitching now revolves around Price and the boost he can give to the team, but the expectations on the backup cast of Mark Buehrle, R.A. Dickey and Marco Estrada remain high.
Estrada, following Dickey’s solid eight-inning outing Wednesday, went 52⁄ innings Thursday night,
3 and was all but spotless after giving up those two first-inning runs on a two-run Kendrys Morales double.
The pen factored in nicely, with Brett Cecil, LaTroy Hawkins, Aaron Sanchez, and Roberto Osuna blanking the Royals the rest of the night.