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Homers from Navarro, Martin and Donaldson plus good pitching equals a Blue Jays a win

Two in a row.

By Tom Dakers
Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

Royals 2 Blue Jays 5

That was a nice win.

Good start for Marco Estrada, 5.2 innings, just 3 hits allow (2 singles, 1 double), no walks with 3 strikeouts. He had a bit of trouble in the 1st inning, getting 2 quick outs, then hit Lorenzo Cain with a pitch, gave up a broken bat single to Eric Hosmer and a double to Kendrys Morales.

After that he got 15 straight outs.

Then a 2-out single by Cain and Gibby pulled him.

It seemed like a quick hook but lefty Eric Hosmer was up, and the fly balls off Estrada seemed to be going a little further each at bat. Marco does give up his share of home runs. I'd guess I'd rather Gibby pull a guy 1 batter too early than 1 batter too late. Brett Cecil came in and got Hosmer to ground out.

Gibby could have/should have let Cecil have the 7th, but instead he brought in LaTroy Hawkins, who gave up a couple of soft singles but got through the inning without a run scoring.

Aaron Sanchez pitched a very nice 8th and Roberto Osuna got 2 ground outs to second and a one to first  for his 6th save.

Great job by the bullpen.

On offense, we scored 5 runs in the first 4 innings:

  • In the first: Troy Tulowitzki got hit by pitch to start things. Josh Donaldson doubled and Jose Bautista hit a fly, just deep enough to right to score Troy. I thought Bautista had a single, but his line drive hung up just a bit too long. We should have scored more, but Chris Colabello popped out, Russell Martin walked and Danny Valencia popped out.
  • In the second: Kevin Pillar had a lead off single and Dioner Navarro followed with a home run.
  • In the third: Russell Martin had a solo homer.
  • In the fourth: Josh Donaldson crushed a solo homer.
That was all we'd need. We had 7 hits and 6 walks on the day. And three of the hits were home runs.

Troy Tulowitzki was 0 for 3, but he made a very nice play at short, on one of the few ground balls Marco allowed, going to the first base side of second and making a nice throw.

Jays of the Day: Donaldson (.199 WPA) and Navarro (.172). And I'll give one to Estrada too, his WPA was only .077, but 15 straight outs and, really, he got unlucky in the first when he gave up his runs.

No suckage Jays, Ryan Goins had the low mark at -.060 for an 0 for 4 with 2 strikeouts and a GDP. But the double play was a very hard hit ball and he almost had a single, to lead off the four, but first baseman Hosmer tagged him in the worse spot a man can get tagged. Goins tumbled over the bag, and, for a moment, he looked like he hurt himself. But he stayed in the game.

Two wins in a row....lets get #3 tomorrow.

We had 1175 comments in the GameThread. Stressed led us to victory. Great job sir.

# Commenter # Comments
1 stressed 129
2 T-Ball 117
3 Pikachu 97
4 Alan F. 71
5 MjwW 56
6 Tom Dakers 53
7 DangYouToHeck 47
8 ThatsRobbery 46
9 SayWord13 45
10 rob.magnificent 43
11 Diamond_D86 43
12 lalalaprise 42
13 Kurupt 42
14 ayjackson 38
15 Matt Gross (RhodeIslandRoxfan) 27
16 Vagabond13 26
17 TorontoKen 24
18 Janz_V84 18
19 GN-001-Exia 18
20 dannyofbosnia2.0 18
21 Spor 17
22 J.Bruce 14
23 bigandstrong 13
24 Mane6ian 12
25 TwitchyJB 11

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