Blue Jays club season-high five home runs in rout of Yankees
Take a look around the league with Big League Stew’s daily wrap up. We’ll hit on all of the biggest moments from the day that you may have missed, while providing highlights, photos and interesting stats.
Not much went the way of the home team at Yankees Stadium on Friday.
It started in the afternoon with Mark Teixeira announcing he would miss the rest of the season because of a broken bone in his leg. It continued in the evening with Toronto bashing a season-best five home runs to swamp the Yankees 11-5.
Russell Martin hit a pair of homers and Josh Donaldson, Justin Smoak and Edwin Encarnacion each hit one out of the park as the Blue Jays increased their lead in the AL East to 21/2 games.
Toronto starter David Price wasn’t exactly on top of his game lasting only five innings, but he didn’t need to be spoiled by unreal run support. Toronto has won five straight games in Yankees Stadium for the first time since 2003 and it could be ready to add to its streak with a doubleheader scheduled for Saturday in a key four-game series that will help decide the east.
.@BlueJays have 23 games with 10+ runs this season. That’s 10 more than any other team in @MLB. pic.twitter.com/CTN5c1awKx
— MLB Stat of the Day (@MLBStatoftheDay) September 12, 2015
ORIOLES SLAM ROYALS TWICE IN AN INNING
Baltimore manager Buck Showalter was ejected from a rousing win over Kansas City in the eighth inning when he became angry about Chris David being hit with a pitch.
Showalter missed a bit of history. His team became just the eighth to hit a pair of grand slams in the same inning as the Oriloles handed the Royals another defeat. Kansas City seems to be slumping at a bad time losing seven of thier past eight outings.
Nolan Reimold hit a go-ahead grand slam in what became a 10-run eighth inning with a total of 13 batters coming to the plate.Steve Clevenger found himself at the plate with the bases loaded later in the inning and clubbed a pitch into the seats in right-center field.
Three home runs were hit in the inning. Steve Pearce also belted a solo shot in addition to the slams.
2 grand slams have been hit by a franchise in same inning only 8 times. @Orioles are only club to do it twice (’86). pic.twitter.com/An74FsvGEX
— MLB Stat of the Day (@MLBStatoftheDay) September 12, 2015
Kansas City has a 10-game lead in its division and the best record in the American League. So there probably isn’t much concern over how this went down in the clubhouse.
ARIZONA HAMMERS DODGERS
File this one under didn’t see that coming.
The Dodgers had won eight of their past 10 games entering Friday’s series opener in the desert against the Diamondbacks, but a punchless Los Angeles team showed up for this one and Arizona took advantage.
The Diamondbacks nearly shut out the Dodgers but Justin Ruggiano smashed a grand slam with two outs in the top of the ninth to help L.A. save face a little bit.
Dodgers starter Alex Wood survived ust 12/3 innings allowing eight hits and six earned runs. Hardly the kind of performance the club had in mind when it traded for him from Atlanta. He has gone 3-4 with a 4.53 ERA in eight starts since the trade. Some of them have been pretty good. In fact, in his previous outing against San Diego he kept the Padres off the scoreboard through seven innings.
The Dodgers are comfortably ahead in the NL west and can afford problems like inconsistency behind its two aces.
PITTSBURGH SNAPS STREAK AGAINST BREWERS
The Pirates had lost seven straight to Milwaukee prior to Friday’s game at PNC Park where they snapped the streak with a 6-3 win.
The victory kept the Pirates four games behind St Louis in the central division race and 21/2 games up on the Chicago Cubs for the first wild card spot in the playoffs.
Charlie Morton pitched six innings and gave up just three hits for Pittsburgh. Two of them came in the first inning and did most of the damage when Elian Herrera doubled and Adam Lind hit a two-run homer. Morton settled in from there.
Catcher Chris Stewart had three hits for the Pirates and drove in three runs.
Want to see more from Friday’s slate of games? Check out our scoreboard.
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Kyle Ringo is a contributing writer to Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KyleRingo