Davis’ 2 homers power Athletics past Blue Jays, 5-4

“No matter where you are in life, you have to believe that you belong and just run with that”.

In the bottom of the second, Khris Davis led off with the first of his two mammoth home runs to cut the Toronto lead to 2-1. It was Davis’ ninth career multi-homer game, three of which came this season.

Semien homered and Yonder Alonso added a tying pinch-hit two-run double in the sixth.

They are 12-10 since a terrible stretch from May 1 to June 19 in which they lost 29 of 44. The right-hander has a 6.16 ERA over his past 12 starts.

In seven major league seasons the six-foot-four, 220-pound first baseman has appeared in 780 games posting a. 225 batting average with 101 home runs, 316 RBIs and a. 310 on-base percentage.

“He stayed with the hard knuckler and he was really aggressive with it, ” Thole said. “It’s been a long time and there’ve been a lot of things that have happened”.

Blue Jays’ starter R.A. Dickey threw a knuckler that came in at an estimated 66 miles per hour, and Healy was all over the 3-2 pitch, launching it out to left field with an easy swing for a homer and a 4-2 Oakland lead.

“If you got the ball up in the air today, it was going to go”, said Dickey. I think it was more of a precautionary thing than anything, to make sure it was 100 percent healed. Over his final three innings Gray allowed three singles and a walk, but no runner got past second base, and only one got that far.

“He struggled a bit, but he did his best work toward the end of the game, which I was impressed with”, manager Bob Melvin said of Gray.

Healy, who finished the game 2-for-3, said he’d never faced a knuckleballer at any level. They gave me big high-fives, unlike the guys in the dugout who gave me the silent treatment – which I love.

Dickey, who’d won five of his previous eight starts, allowed five runs on five hits, including three homers, and three walks in six innings.

Toronto Blue Jays’ Edwin Encarnacion, right, celebrates with Josh Donaldson after hitting a home …

It was another slow start for Gray, who gave up a two-run double with two out in the second inning to Josh Thole, the Blue Jays’ catcher putting Toronto up 2-0 early.

The winning rally in the ninth started with an infield hit against the shift for Justin Smoak, then a single from Junior Lake up the middle before Donaldson’s liner to left cracked the 3-3 tie.

Kevin Pillar gunned the ball to the plate and Russell Martin applied the tag in a bang-bang play that moved home plate ump Mark Wegner to rule the runner out.

Reddick scored the tiebreaking run in the seventh inning on a play that was overturned by replay, and Oakland held on to beat the Toronto Blue Jays 8-7 Friday night.

A’s manager Bob Melvin said he didn’t have a read on when Hill might get back on the mound, nor was Melvin ready to announce a Tuesday starter after Sean Manaea was pressed into emergency duty Sunday. That tied it, and Vogt untied it with a run-scoring single, but not before Josh Reddick, trying to score his fourth run, was called out at the plate. No timetable has been established for RHP’s Henderson Alvarez (right shoulder surgery) and Fernando Rodriguez (right shoulder strain), out since March 25 and July 4.

Blue Jays: LHP J.A. Happ is 6-0 with a 2.73 ERA over his last six starts.

Blue Jays: RHP Aaron Sanchez (9-1) pitches the opener of a two-game series in Arizona on Monday. He earned his 12th win, matching his career single-season high, on July 8, blanking Detroit over 5 2/3 innings.