Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> had 18 hits, including five home runs, all within the first three pitches of an at-bat in a 13-4 rout of the Seattle Mariners on Wednesday night that pulled them to 2-1 in the AL Championship Series.<\/p>\nEight of those hits came off Kirby, who hadn\u2019t yielded that many hits in a start since 3 September.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m never going to stray away from what I do well, and that\u2019s get ahead and be in the zone,\u201d Kirby said. \u201cAnd they had a lot of comfortable at-bats tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirby gave up a tying, two-run homer to Andr\u00e9s Gim\u00e9nez in a five-run third on an inside fastball and two-run double to Daulton Varsho on an up fastball.<\/p>\n
George Springer homered on a sinker in the fourth and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on a slider in the fifth.<\/p>\n
Alejandro Kirk added an opposite-field, three-run homer to right off a fastball from left-hander Caleb Ferguson in the sixth as the Blue Jays joined Tampa Bay in Game 4 of the 2020 World Series as the only teams to homer in four straight postseason innings, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.<\/p>\n
Addison Barger connected in the ninth on a Luke Jackson fastball.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a lineup starts combining hits together like they were, it gets contagious,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cGuys go up there and just get the best swings off. So, a lot of times it goes your way, and tonight it went theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toronto had four runs and eight hits as Seattle swept the first two games in Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t really executing when they got the guys on base,\u201d Kirby said. \u201cThey\u2019re really aggressive when that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seattle\u2019s pitchers were sixth in the AL with a 3.87 ERA and had a 3.29 ERA in the Division Series against Detroit. Ferguson expressed confidence they quickly will return to form.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there\u2019s one thing we\u2019ve done since I\u2019ve been here,\u201d Ferguson said, \u201cwe bounce back together well as a team and we respond well when we kind of get smacked in the face a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Kirby was in the strike zone \u2013 perhaps too much. The Toronto Blue Jays had 18 hits,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-217214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}