Blue Jays meet the brooms with another loss to Rays

The Toronto Blue Jays fell to the Rays once again, losing 6-3 as Tampa Bay completed the series sweep.

R.A. Dickey‘s outing lasted through six innings and 103 pitches, but the knuckleballer allowed three homers en route to five runs against (four earned). Dickey did strike out six compared to just one walk, working some nice movement on his signature pitch, but the long balls left their mark.

Logan Morrison and Desmond Jennings got to Dickey with back-to-back solo home runs in the third inning. In the fifth, Kevin Kiermaier put a two-run blast into the second deck.

Joe Biagini followed Dickey out of the bullpen, pitching a clean inning to shrink his ERA to 0.63. Gavin Floyd handled the final two innings, allowing one run on two hits. That run would be a low point for the Blue Jays, though, with Tim Beckham scoring all the way from second base on a passed ball as Josh Thole could not locate the ball.

Jimmy Paredes got his first start of the season and played third base with Josh Donaldson getting a scheduled day of rest and wasted no time, launching a solo home run of his own to the opposite field in his first at-bat of the game.

Michael Saunders hit his sixth home run of the season, showing excellent patience on a Jake Odorizzi curveball and sending it over the right-field wall. Edwin Encarnacion joined in by going deep to centre, also a solo job. Justin Smoak‘s double, which followed Encarnacion’s home run, was the Blue Jays first non-home-run hit of the day in the eighth inning. Toronto finished with just four hits.

Prior to the game it was reported that Brett Cecil will be out for at least one month while he deals with a torn lat muscle in his throwing arm.

Manager John Gibbons and relief pitcher Jesse Chavez both served the second game of their three-game suspensions.