On Monday, the Blue Jays battered Royals in game 3 of the ALCS ending Toronto’s power outage. With this win, the Jays also got themselves out of the hole that they had dug themselves into in Kansas City.The Blue Jays cut Kansas City’s lead in the American League Championship Series to 2-1 as they outlasted the Royals in Toronto 11-8. Troy Tulowitzki, Josh Donaldson, and Ryan Goins played a key role in the win as they led the Blue Jays to victory.
Seeking inspiration from their 15-11 win over Toronto, the Royals rallied for four runs in the ninth. Unfortunately for them it was too little, too late. According to a relieved Blue Jays manager John Gibbons, the Jays desperately needed that breakout and the runs really came in handy keeping in view how the game ended. He also acknowledged that even though his team had a big lead, the game was far from easy.
The Royals came into this game on the back of a 5-0 and 6-3 win in Kansas City. In those two games, they completely handcuffed a Jays side that led the majors during the regular seasonaveraging 5.5 runs a game. However, cheered on by a loud sellout Rogers Centre crowd of 49, 751, Blue Jays came alive in ALCS game 3.
On a night where the 11 runs scored set a Toronto franchise record in a home post-season game,Tulowitzki, Donaldson, and Goins combined for nine RBIs.A franchise single-game playoff mark was what these three homers matched. This was the third time in Blue Jays’ playoff history that they scored 10 or more runs and the first time they won a post-season game when allowing 15 hits.
The lone sour note other than the Royals late rally was Tulowitzki’s ejection after taking the field in the eighth.Tulowitzki’s was tossed for chirping a little too much with home plate umpire John Hirschbeck.Tulowitzki’s had just struck out for the second time and wasn’t happy about it. In fact, he had to be held back by bench coach DeMarlo Hale. The Jays shortstop was clearly unhappy about his ‘unwarranted’ ejection something obvious from his post game comments, he said, “I think it was obvious I didn’t agree with the called third strike. And there were other pitches that were questionable.”
On the other hand, it was a night to forget for Cueto. He gave up eight runs on six hits with four walks, one hit batsman and two strikeouts in two innings. He threw 69 pitches, of which only 39 were strikes. Toronto starter Marcus Stroman pitched 6 1/3 innings and said of his first pot-season win, “It was a battle all day. It was tough.I definitely didn’t have my best command. I felt like I was getting into advantage counts and my off speed, I wasn’t able to put them away; I was leaving some off speed up in the zone.”
For Toronto, it’s been one heck of a baseball season and taking into account the performance of Blue Jays in ALCS game 3, they certainly don’t want it to end.
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