Jose Bautista led off the game with his 10th home run of the year and third of the series, taking Phil Hughes deep on a 2-1 pitch. Josh Donaldson added another home run shortly after. Then Troy Tulowitzki doubled to score Michael Saunders.
Suddenly the Minnesota Twins were down 3-0, and they could only muster three hits and one run that came in the second inning on a Kurt Suzuki groundout.
“It didn’t start out well. He’s coming off an outing where we had to deal with some issues there, and he was anxious to get back out there, and then you give up a couple of back-to-backs,” said manager Paul Molitor.
“It looked like he had a little bit of trouble with his arm-side command there early with the Bautista home run and the curveball obviously didn’t get where it needed to on Donaldson. And Tulowitzki had a big hit, and we were down three.”
Molitor gave Hughes credit for settling things down and getting through 6.0 innings, giving up no additional runs afterwards, although also throwing no strikeouts either.
Hughes acknowledged his slow start, as well as offered a status update on his arm after the game.
Marcus Stroman went 7.2 innings, giving up only three hits and one earned run.
“He’s got a lot of movement with that two-seamer, and he threw enough cutters, and he threw change-ups to lefties. But mostly he trusted that movement on his fastball, whether he back-doored it to the righties or get it in on their hands,” said Molitor.
“We took some funny swings, it gives you an idea of the movement that he had.”
Suzuki was able to have some success off of the Toronto starter, however, scoring Robbie Grossman on a groundout in the second and recording his 1000th career hit in the eighth.
Suzuki and Danny Santana both singled to start the eighth, but Brian Dozier grounded into a double-play. The Jays removed Stroman in favor of Roberto Osuna, who got Eduardo Nunez to fly out to curb the rally.
“We’re trying some different things to get back into the game as far as either tying or go ahead,” said Molitor. “Brian got a count in his favor, and he just rolled over a sinker and they got the double-play and then they brought in their closer — one pitch and they’re out of the inning.”
Things got testy in the fourth inning when Hughes threw behind Donaldson. In the video above, Hughes said he was just trying to throw inside after Donaldson took him deep on an outside pitch, but Donaldson became upset that the umpire did not issue Hughes a warning and John Gibbons was ejected when he came out of the dugout to argue with the umpire.
Molitor and Hughes were mum on the subject, while Suzuki said that he knows Donaldson well from their time together in Oakland and that he plays the game the right way.
“We had a chance to win three of the games,” said Molitor. “First game. I thought yesterday we made a nice comeback, and today I thought we were in it right until the end.”
