Bautista’s homer sparks 6-run inning as Blue Jays beat Mariners to avoid sweep
Posted April 13, 2011 7:45 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Jose Bautista hit a three-run homer off Seattle reliever Chris Ray, part of Toronto’s six-run eighth inning, and the Blue Jays avoided a three-game sweep by rallying for an 8-3 win over the Mariners on Wednesday.
Much to the delight of the many Blue Jays fans that made the drive down from B.C., Bautista unloaded on a 2-1 breaking ball that Ray (1-1) left in the middle of the plate, hitting it into the Toronto bullpen in left field — where reliever Jon Rauch caught the homer as he was warming up.
It was Bautista’s third homer of the season and snapped an 17-inning scoreless streak by the Mariners’ bullpen, ruining a strong start by Seattle lefty Jason Vargas. Toronto sent 11 batters to the plate in the inning.
Toronto’s Mark Rzepczynski (1-0) worked two innings of hitless relief to get the victory.
Seattle went to its bullpen an inning earlier when Jamey Wright took over for Vargas and got the final out of the seventh with a strikeout of Jose Molina. Instead of staying with Wright, Seattle manager Eric Wedge went with Ray.
The eighth started innocently enough with a broken-bat single up the middle by Yunel Escobar, but Corey Patterson followed with a bunt single. Bautista, who struck out twice earlier and fouled out down the left-field line in a key spot in the fifth, then deposited Ray’s pitch.
The Jays weren’t done as Jayson Nix doubled and later scored on Edwin Encarnacion’s two-out double. Ray was finally pulled, leaving to a smattering of boos from the tiny afternoon crowd on a chilly and damp day.
Ray, who made the club out of spring training after going to camp on a minor-league deal, has allowed 11 hits, eight earned runs and two homers in 4 2-3 innings so far this season.
Josh Lueke took over and didn’t fare much better. He walked John McDonald, then gave up a two-run double to Molina, his third hit and second double of the afternoon, and a single to Escobar before finally getting a strikeout of Patterson to end the inning.
Seattle seemed poised for the sweep with the way Vargas was pitching and after Justin Smoak led off the sixth inning with an opposite-field homer to left that snapped a 1-all tie.
Batting from the left side, where Smoak entered Wednesday hitting just .188, the young first baseman took a 3-2 pitch from Toronto rookie starter Kyle Drabek and drove it into the Toronto bullpen in left field. It was Smoak’s first homer of the season.
Drabek left later in the sixth after allowing walks to Ryan Langerhans and Chris Gimenez. Drabek gave up six hits, struck out five and walked four. He threw 114 pitches, but his strikes-to-balls ratio was almost even: 59 strikes, 55 balls.
It was the most pitches Drabek has thrown in his six major league starts.
Seattle’s only other run off Drabek came in the third when Milton Bradley’s double to left-centre field scored Ichiro Suzuki from first. Brendan Ryan added an RBI single in the eighth.
Vargas pitched well, rebounding from the Mariners home opener when he was tagged for seven earned runs and nine hits in Cleveland’s 12-3 rout. Vargas gave up six runs one-third of an inning that night, yet gave up just five hits.
