{"id":118642,"date":"2017-09-20T01:30:07","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T05:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=118642"},"modified":"2017-09-20T01:30:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T05:30:07","slug":"barney-drives-in-three-runs-and-stroman-works-seven-strong-innings-in-jays-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/09\/20\/barney-drives-in-three-runs-and-stroman-works-seven-strong-innings-in-jays-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Barney drives in three runs and Stroman works seven strong innings in Jays’ win"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Blue<\/a>
Blue Jay’s Darwin Barney (Photo By Keith Allison – https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/keithallison\/21664718199\/, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO \u2014 With their playoff hopes dashed, the last-place Toronto Blue Jays can look to personal milestones for small victories as they play out the string on the 2017 campaign.<\/p>\n

Marcus Stroman earned a career-high 12th win of the season Tuesday by throwing seven strong innings in a 5-2 win over the Kansas City Royals at Rogers Centre. Darwin Barney hit a two-run homer and Russell Martin drove in two runs as the Blue Jays took the opener of the three-game series.<\/p>\n

Stroman (12-8), who allowed four hits and one earned run, is primed to reach his goal of the 200-inning plateau by season’s end.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all started with Stroman,\u201d said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. \u201cHe did a hell of a job. Seven strong innings in a tight ball game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stroman walked a pair, had five strikeouts, and lowered his earned-run average to 3.01. He has gone seven-plus innings on 11 occasions this season while the rest of the Toronto starters have done it 17 times combined.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel extremely strong,\u201d Stroman said. \u201cI feel like I could throw another however many innings. I feel great and I’m looking forward to my next two starts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan Goins led off the sixth inning with a single before Barney turned on an 0-2 pitch from Ian Kennedy for his fifth homer of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was looking to get a bunt down,\u201d Barney said. \u201cUnfortunately that didn’t work out and I guess the best-case scenario after that is what happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cI battled a couple pitches and got one I could handle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Royals starter Ian Kennedy (4-12) allowed just one hit \u2014 \u00a0a Justin Smoak double \u2014 \u00a0over the first five innings. Goins squeaked a ball through the infield in the sixth and the Barney blast ended the right-hander’s night.<\/p>\n

Kennedy allowed three hits, two earned runs and struck out a pair.<\/p>\n

Stroman, meanwhile, gave up a single to Whit Merrifield in the first inning and a double to Mike Moustakas in the second before finding his groove.<\/p>\n

The Royals (73-77) got on the board in the seventh inning after Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez hit back-to-back singles to put runners on the corners with nobody out. Centre-fielder Kevin Pillar made a nice sliding catch on a Mike Moustakas liner but it was enough to bring Hosmer home on the sacrifice fly.<\/p>\n

Toronto answered in the bottom half as Martin’s double scored pinch-runner Rob Refsnyder and Kevin Pillar. Barney added another RBI by driving in Martin with a single.<\/p>\n

Alex Gordon hit a solo shot off Toronto reliever Ryan Tepera in the eighth inning. His eighth homer of the season came on a 3-2 pitch.<\/p>\n

Gordon’s homer set a new MLB record. It was the 5,694th home run of 2017, breaking the season record set in 2000 at the height of the Steroids Era.<\/p>\n

The ball will be heading to Cooperstown.<\/p>\n

\u201cA pretty cool thing to be a part of,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cI didn’t hit many this year but I guess I made one count. It’s good to be in the Hall of Fame, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roberto Osuna worked the ninth for his 37th save. Toronto outhit Kansas City 8-6.<\/p>\n

Announced attendance was 33,554 and the game took two hours 27 minutes to play.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2014 With their playoff hopes dashed, the last-place Toronto Blue Jays can look to personal milestones for small victories …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":118649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[23576,24349,24348,24350,12074],"class_list":["post-118642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-darwin-barney","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-marcus-stroman","tag-russell-martin","tag-toronto-blue-jays","mauthors-gregory-strong","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}