Blue Jays’ Goins puts ALCS misplay behind him

A few batters later, Jose Bautista capitalized on the mistakes as he sent a 3-run moonshot into the Rogers Centre stands, cementing his bomb with a bat flip for the ages. “Price is a tough pitcher”, Gordon said. Heading into the 7th, the game was deadlocked at 2-2 and it appeared that Hamels was relatively cruising. The initial report was a strain of the ligament and Encarnacion was listed as day-to-day.

“He’s got the “it” factor”, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “We were going to jump off when that last out went into the glove. So we’ll see how he is tomorrow”. As more young players from South America and the Caribbean join the Major League Baseball, more bat flipping and more excited celebration is sure to follow by the likes of Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig, Odubel Herrera and others.

Juan Lagares singled leading off, took second on Matt Harvey’s sacrifice and swiped third, the second stolen base off runner-challenged Chicago starter Jon Lester.

How good was the Kansas City bullpen? Price threw first-pitch strikes to 12 of 14 batters at one point and struck out the side in the sixth inning, giving no indication he was about to implode.

Madson gave up a single and walk with one in the eighth but escaped further damage.

Had the Blue Jays won the game, the story might have been that the Josh Donaldson foul pop-up which deflected off a wire that holds up the backstop led to the two-run rally in the sixth that put the game away. But Volquez was the stingy one on this night.

Stroman, pitching in just his seventh game of the year after tearing his ACL during spring training, has come up huge for the Blue Jays already this post-season. First pitch is 4:07pm and as yesterday, we’ll be stuck with the sounds of Joe Buck and Harold Reynolds along with the actually informative Tom Verducci.

And for six innings, he was right.

Both teams got a man on second early – in the first inning for Kansas City and third for Toronto – but could not make anything of it. “I spent that one year with him”. They went from a team that had no answer for what Price was serving up to one that just plain teed off on him.

Estrada got two strikeouts in the fourth before Perez hit a 392-foot homer over the left-field wall. It also ended a 12-innings Toronto post-season drought. Cain scored on designated hitter Kendrys Morales’ ground out.

Berry replaces rookie shortstop Addison Russell, who strained his left hamstring during Game 3 of the NL Division Series against St. Louis.

“I loved Terry”, said Gibbons, now 53. He threw 90 pitches, 64 for strikes. They continued to battle. But overall he didn’t give up a lot of hits. “But you ask these guys to pinch-hit or come off the bench or play, and if you don’t give them an opportunity to play, why would I expect a good result when you ask him to come off the bench?” “We just needed to find a way to get a runner on base so we could do what we can, keep the line moving”.

LaTroy Hawkins hit Escobar to open the eighth but, unlike the game in August, there were no fireworks.

Escobar made a defensive gem to bail out Ventura in the second.

The Royals paid close attention to Bautista, who struck out once and walked three times.

They wouldn’t get it. Volquez made them all look like little babies, incapable of dealing with the pitcher’s arsenal of sinkers, change-ups, and curveballs, as the Royals rolled to a 5-0 victory in the opener of this best-of-seven series. 286 (6-for-21) with a homer and three RBIs in six postseason games going into Saturday’s action.

None of that will matter if the Blue Jays’ bats fail to get anything going against Kansas City ace and Game 3 starter Johnny Cueto. “Playing from behind in a five-game series is different than playing from behind in a seven-game series”.

The Jays outscored the Royals by 167 runs during the regular season (891 to 724), which is the largest margin ever by one team over its LCS opponent according to Elias Sports.

Price’s earned-run average is 7.02 ERA this post-season, compared to 2.30 in the regular season with Toronto.

The reigning American League champions have won nine consecutive ALCS games dating to their memorable seven-game series against Toronto in 1985, the year they won their only World Series. Like, weirder than nearly anything that baseball has offered us before, weirder than the infamous Bill Buckner error or the Cubs’ World Series drought.

After wearing their alternate blue jerseys and beating Los Angeles in Game 3 of the Division Series, the Mets’ reverted to their traditional white, pinstriped uniform for Game 4 and lost. The Jays have not been in the championship series since winning it in 1993.