Estrada shines in Blue Jays cloudy Fenway win over Red Sox

The bats came alive this afternoon at Fenway as the Blue Jays smashed four home runs over the Green Monster to capture the series win over the Red Sox.  Despite some rough weather, it was mostly smooth sailing for the Jays.

The starting pitching was stellar as the Blue Jay’s ace took the mound.  Marco Estrada (2.23 ERA) struggled in the first two innings, walking both the leadoff batters; however, he settled down quickly.  By the third inning, Estrada’s pitches were sailing into the strike zone like clockwork, garnering Estrada a lot of pop-ups and fly outs.

The Jays’ ace ended up walking three striking out five while carrying a no-hitter into the eighth inning.  He threw seven and a third innings of no-hit ball before giving up a home run to Chris Young.  Estrada came out of the game in the ninth after allowing only two earned runs on two hits.

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Things got rather tense when the usually sharp Roberto Osuna entered the game in relief of Estrada and allowed the inherited run on second to score, then proceeded to allow two more runs to score.  With the game one run from being all tied up at 5-4, Osuna, with runners on first and second and down to his last strike, blew a 97mph fastball past pinch-hitter Marco Hernadez to earn the save.

Boston Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez (3.00 ERA) didn’t make it out of the sixth inning, giving up five earned runs, all of which came by way of the long ball. He only allowed four hits; unfortunately for Rodriguez they were four home runs.  Rodriguez walked three and didn’t strike out a single batter in his five and two-thirds, innings of work.

Darwin Barney reached base every time he came to bat with a home run and two walks.  Russell Martin also had a good game reaching base two out of four times with a home run and a walk.  Edwin Encarnacion had a two run homerun in the third inning and Jose Bautista had a lead-off home run to get the game started in the first inning.

The Blue Jays defence was excellent including some fantastic plays by Bautista in right field to help out his pitcher.  Matt Dominguez was also on the ball when it came to his defence making all of ordinary -and some extraordinary- plays over at third base.

Next up the Jays head to Detroit as J.A. Happ (6-2, 3.06 ERA) takes on Detroit’s Michael Fulmer (5-1, 3.24 ERA) on Monday, June 6th at 7:07pm