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1st-place Jays down O’s with 1st-inning HRs
- Updated: September 1, 2016
BALTIMORE — Toronto used a three-run first inning, including homers by Jose Bautista and Russell Martin, to stay hot on the road and continue to pace the American League East.
The Blue Jays, 5-3 winners in Wednesday’s rubber game over Baltimore at Camden Yards, are 36-29 away from Rogers Centre, which is good for the highest road winning percentage (.554) in the AL. The red-hot Blue Jays (76-57) kept their AL East lead to two games over the Red Sox and pushed third-place Baltimore (72-61) into a tie with Detroit for the second Wild Card spot.
“It’s never easy when you play these guys,” Toronto manager John Gibbons said. “This time of year, I mean this is a team we’re locked in it with. It’s always big to beat them.”
Blue Jays starter Aaron Sanchez, pitching on 10 days’ rest after being sent to the Minors, held the Orioles to one unearned run on five hits and three walks over six innings, striking out two while picking up his 13th win.
“I think that rest probably did him a world of wonders,” Gibbons said. “They battled, they made a run at him late, but it just shows you how far he’s come, he managed to hang in there and get the big out in the fifth inning and went back out there for the sixth.”
Toronto added an insurance run in the seventh, and Michael Saunders belted a solo shot — his seventh homer against Baltimore this year — off O’s reliever Brad Brach in the eighth.
Orioles starter Yovani Gallardo, after giving up three runs in the first inning, held Toronto off the board for the rest of his six-inning start. The righty allowed five hits and two walks, striking out three.
Jonathan Schoop hit a two-out, two-run homer for the Orioles in the ninth.
“We got a month of baseball left. We got through a tough [month], we knew August was going to be tough,” manager Buck Showalter said. “Did some good things, but not as many as we would have liked. We got an opportunity. A lot of baseball to be played. Anybody who sells us short doesn’t get the essence of our players. That’s fine. They’ve been doing that all year to us.”
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