Donaldson homers three times, Jays sweep Twins

Twins 6 Blue Jays 9

Before the game, I was reading that it was one year ago that Edwin Encarnacion hit three home runs and people threw hats for the hat trick (actually it was the 29th, but close enough).

That was a fun game. And fun series

Josh Donaldson fouled a ball off his knee, in the first inning, it looked like it hurt a lot, and I was all for taking him out of the game.

Then, in the 3rd inning, he made 2 bad throws, 1 for an error and I really thought he should be out of the game.

Then he goes and hits 3 home runs. And all to dead center. Each was crushed.

We had 13 hits on the day, and, as well as Josh’s 3 homers, Troy Tulowitski had 1. We had a bunch of guys having great days:

• Jose Bautista was 3 for 5. He really seemed locked in too.
• Tulo was 2 for 4.
• Kevin Pillar went 2 for 3 with a walk and a double.
• Melvin Upton was 1 for 4, double, 2 RBI.
• Devon Travis was 2 for 4 with a double.

We had 0 fors from Edwin (0 for 3 with a walk and a sac fly), Russell Martin (0 for 3 walk) and Josh Thole (0 for 4, and he hit into a very unlucky double play, in the 6th inning, when we had scored 2 but were still down by a run).

On offense, the game started off in an interesting way. Bautista hit a ball to the wall in left center. It was catchable (tough catch but it was catchable), but CFer Danny Santana and LFer Robbie Grossman collided, allowing Jose an easy double. Santana had to leave the game, after the inning.

On the pitching side, R.A. Dickey was very good, for the first 4 innings. He gave up an unearned run in the 3rd, on Donaldson’s error.

Then came the 5th. He gave up a one out soft single, then a walk....but he was coasting, all was fine. Another walk loaded the bases and we started to worry. A ground out scored a run, tying the game. A passed ball and Trevor Plouffe and Miguel Sano had back to back hard hit singles and we were down 5-2.

Dickey had a nice quick 6th. In all, 6 innings, 6 hits, 5 runs, 3 earned, 3 walks and 5 strikeouts.

Brett Cecil started the 7th, giving up a leadoff single to Joe Mauer. A strikeout later Scott Feldman came in and finished off the inning with a double play ball. Tulo made more fans by coming to talk to Feldman just before the double play ball. I’m sure he said, ok throw a double play ball.

Jason Grilli (get you tee shirt) allowed a walk in the 8th.

Roberto Osuna allowed a double and 2 singles, just to make sure we were paying attention, but he got the last out.

Jays of the Day: Josh (.527 WPA, for the 3 homers, and, as my wife pointed out ‘only’ 4 RBI), Bautista (.138) and Pillar (.116).

Suckage: Dickey (-.330), Thole (-.150) and Martin (-.098).

Bring on the Orioles.

We had 1471 comments in the GameThread (and Tom didn’t open a second thread?). TimmyMax led us to the victory. Good job.