Jose Bautista hit his 27th home run of the season to back a stellar outing from Drew Hutchison and the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Oakland Athletics 4-2 on Tuesday for their ninth straight victory.
Fans are jumping aboard the Blue Jays bandwagon. The Jays sold 39,381 tickets – almost 10,000 more than average – for a game against the lowly Oakland A’s.
It's the first time in Blue Jays history they have recorded two winning streaks of at least nine games in a season. The Blue Jays won a season-high 11 straight in June.
Hutchison (11-2) allowed two runs and four hits in seven-plus innings. The right-hander hadn't completed seven innings since a complete-game victory over the Chicago White Sox on May 25.
By game’s end, the fans were on their feet and cheering Roberto Osuna’s second strikeout of the ninth inning. Toronto closed to within a half-game of the front-running Yankees, who lost in 16 innings at Cleveland.
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Athletics: RHP Aaron Brooks (1-0, 2.41 ERA) will make his third start for Oakland since being acquired in a trade with Kansas City. He's 1-0 with a 1.26 ERA in two starts with the Athletics.
Blue Jays: RHP R.A. Dickey (6-10, 3.93 ERA) will move up a day to start Wednesday, pushing Mark Buehrle back a day and giving the veteran left-hander six days off between starts. Toronto is 4-0 in Dickey's past four starts, and he's lowered his ERA by .60 in that span.
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Ten reasons the Blue Jays look unbeatable right now according to espn.go.com
The offense is on fire. Already the league's best offense before the Tulowitzki trade, the Jays have hit .273/.349/.481 since the deal, with 22 home runs. That's 5.6 runs per game, up from 5.2 BT (before Tulo).
The rotation is on fire. Price has allowed one run in 15 innings in his two Jays starts, but others have stepped up as well: The rotation is 11-1 with a 1.92 ERA AT (after Tulo).
The bullpen is on fire. AT: 1.72 ERA, .157 batting average allowed.
Rookie closer Roberto Osuna. With Sanchez, who's still classified as a rookie, now in the setup role, the Jays are going with rookies in the eighth and ninth.
Speaking of Donaldson, he's also an MVP candidate. His recent surge has certainly raised his stock. Here's a quick comparison of Donaldson and Mike Trout:
Trout: .302/.394/.608, 33 HR, 69 RBI, 78 R, 6.8 WAR
Donaldson: .297/.365/.578, 31 HR, 83 RBI, 82 R, 6.3 WAR
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Jose Bautista is still feared. He's hitting only .240, but his overall line of .240/.361/.512 means the on-base ability and slugging is still there.
Did we mention that Edwin Encarnacion is heating up? Yes, we did. He hit .205 in April and .225 in May but is .288/.396/.516 since, including that .394 mark in the AT era.
Kevin Pillar's defense. Overall, the Jays are about an average defensive team with three big strengths -- Donaldson at third, Martin behind the plate and Pillar in center.
They were good before the trades. Even though the Jays were 50-51, they had outscored their opponents by 94 runs when the Tulowitzki trade was made, which had them tied with the Kansas City Royals at the time for the best projected winning percentage in the AL.
Now they have an ace. Before his start Saturday, Price had allowed eight runs in each of his previous two starts against the Yankees (one in April, one in August 2014). Price got some revenge the other day and will start against them again on Friday.
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