Blue Jays tag starter JT Brubaker for 4 runs to beat Pirates
The Toronto Blue Jays tagged starter JT Brubaker for four runs on four hits in a 7-1 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday afternoon in a Grapefruit League game before 6,905 at TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Fla.
Brubaker, who had six strikeouts in 4 1/3 innings and leads the Grapefruit League with 20 strikeouts in 12 1/3 innings, retired six of the first seven batters he faced. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was the only baserunner to reach, doing so on a throwing error by third baseman Rodolfo Castro.
That changed in the third inning, when Cavan Biggio singled to right, advanced to second on a groundout and scored on Whit Merrifield’s flare down the right-field line that dropped for a double and a 1-0 lead. Guerrero drove one 321 feet over Bryan Reynolds and off the left-field wall to score Merrifield for a 2-0 lead.
The Blue Jays added two more runs in the fifth, when Nathan Lukes drove in Biggio with a triple to the right-field corner and scored on Merrifield’s sacrifice fly to center to stretch the advantage to 4-0.
The Pirates cut it to 4-1 in the seventh, when Connor Joe hit a ground-rule double off Anthony Bass and scored on Travis Swaggerty’s single to right. Joe went 3 for 3 to become the first Pirates player with a three-hit game this spring, and Swaggerty boosted his batting average to .400 (8 for 20) and has a team-best seven RBIs this spring.
After Carmen Mlodzinski completed the fifth to extend his scoreless streak to six innings, Pirates 6-foot-8 left-hander Angel Perdomo struck out the side in the sixth. Yerry De Los Santos gave up two runs in the seventh, when he walked Davis Schneider and hit Luis De Los Santos with a pitch then, with runners on second and third, gave up a two-run single to Phil Clarke as the Blue Jays extended their lead to 6-1.
Toronto’s LT Talley took a 2-2 slider by John O’Reilly deep to right-center to stretch it to a 7-1 lead in the eighth.
Johan Oviedo is expected to start against Clarke Schmidt when the Pirates visit the New York Yankees at 6:35 p.m. Thursday at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa.
Kevin Gorman is a TribLive reporter covering the Pirates. A Baldwin native and Penn State graduate, he joined the Trib in 1999 and has covered high school sports, Pitt football and basketball and was a sports columnist for 10 years. He can be reached at kgorman@triblive.com.
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