Jays Rock Royals
Posted May 23, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Roy Halladay is back at .500 and so are the Toronto Blue Jays. And in a refreshing change, they didn’t do things the hard way.
Enjoying a rare burst of early run support thanks to four RBIs from Marco Scutaro, the ace right-hander coasted to his fifth complete game of the season in a drama-free 7-1 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Friday night.
Wins as decisive as this one have been a serious rarity so far for the Blue Jays (25-25), who moved back to the break-even point with just their fourth victory by a margin of more than three runs. The seven runs was also the most they’ve scored since an 11-3 win over Baltimore on April 15.
“It’s nice to win the one-run games but to come out and score seven against a tough pitcher has got to be a great boost for those guys offensively,” said Halladay. “We swung the bats great.”
Halladay (5-5), who came in with a run-support average of just 3.1 runs per game, was certainly deserving of the offence after more than his fair share of hard-luck losses. On this night, the Blue Jays not only eked out enough offence to win, they actually buried their opponent and made life easier for their pitcher, delighting the crowd of 24,207.
“You don’t want to ease up, you want to try and keep that mentality that it is a one-run game and keep it on them,” said Halladay. “But you get up six or seven and it’s a different feeling, it doesn’t matter as much if you do make a bad pitch and that’s always a nice feeling as a pitcher.”
Things got off to a bad start for Halladay, who allowed Jose Guillen’s run-scoring single in the first on a weak grounder up the middle. He was nearly untouchable after that as the Royals (21-27) tried in vain to avoid a fifth-straight loss.
Scutaro’s two-out, two-run single in the second off Zack Greinke (5-2) put the Blue Jays up for good and during the decisive four-run third, he drove in two more on another two-out base hit. That came after an RBI double by Alex Rios and a run-scoring single from Lyle Overbay had opened things up earlier in the frame.
Only the final stats were left to be decided after that.
“We’ve been kind of struggling to score runs, especially with guys in scoring position and less than two out,” said Scutaro. “Slumps, they come and sooner or later you’re going to get one.
“It always nice when you get some runs for (Halladay).”
The Royals managed just two hits over the final eight innings, with Halladay sitting down the last 15 batters in order. A spectacular running catch of Billy Butler’s liner to right by Aaron Hill in the seventh helped keep that run alive.
At times it looked like Halladay, starting for the first time since a relief appearance in Philadelphia last Sunday, wasn’t even breaking a sweat.
“You always think that but it’s never that easy,” said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. “They got good balance in their lineup and they have aggressive hitters. Early on they had a good approach against him, they were shooting balls through the middle. But then he kicked it in.”
The Blue Jays added another run in the seventh when Kevin Mench hit into a double play with the bases loaded to bring Rios home.
The game was the first both teams played under the new pace of game efforts ordered by commissioner Bud Selig in place. Umpires were instructed, starting Friday, to better enforce already existing rules to speed up games that include:
— not granting time to batters who step out once the pitcher is in motion and to keep batters from lingering outside the box between pitches.
— making pitchers adhere to a strict 12-second limit in between pitches.
The initiative had no noticeable impact on play Friday, although Royals manager Trey Hillman did jog out to the mound instead of walk during a visit to Greinke.
“This team and that team over there get in the box, the guys get the ball and throw it,” said Gibbons. “I don’t think you’d see it much with these two teams, anyway.”
