TORONTO – Marco Scutaro hit two of the Toronto Blue Jays’ season-high five homers to highlight his team’s most productive offensive night in nearly two months and lead the way in a 10-6 victory over the Cleveland Indians on Wednesday.
Vernon Wells, Aaron Hill and Alex Rios also went deep while Scutaro matched a career-best with four RBIs in the first multi-homer game of his career to give rookie lefty Ricky Romero (8-4) plenty of support before a crowd of 18,375.
The game was a tight affair until the fifth, when the Blue Jays (47-48) built upon their 2-1 lead by posting a five-spot against a shell-shocked Carl Pavano (8-8), whose first four hits allowed each left the yard.
Romero let the Indians (37-58) back into things in the sixth when he served up a three-run shot to Luis Valbuena that ended his night, but Scutaro responded with a three-run homer in the bottom of the frame to restore the breathing room with a 10-4 lead.
While that effectively put away the AL Central cellar-dwellers, they didn’t simply go away, plating two more in the seventh on Jhonny Peralta’s RBI double and Ben Francisco’s run-scoring single.
But Brandon League and Jason Frasor settled things down from there.
The Blue Jays display of might pushed them to double digits in runs for the first time since a gut-wrenching 12-10 extra-inning defeat in Baltimore on May 27, the capper of a season-altering nine-game losing streak.
They blew a five-run lead in that game, but there was no such collapse this time.
The Indians opened the scoring in the first on Travis Hafner’s RBI groundout and Romero tightened up afterwards, locking horns with Pavano, who was tough early.
The righty gave up just two hits through the first four frames – a Wells solo shot in the second, his 10th, and Hill’s solo blast in the fourth, his 21st – before coming undone in the fifth.
Rios opened the frame with his 11th, and Scutaro made it 4-1 with his first of two.
The Blue Jays then kept adding on, as Adam Lind extended his hit streak to 12 games with an RBI double, Scott Rolen ripped a run-scoring single and Lyle Overbay lined an RBI double to end Pavano’s night.
He allowed seven runs on seven hits, six of them for extra bases.
Romero, who walked five and gave up six hits in 5 1-3 innings, had avoided major trouble until the sixth, when Valbuena connected on a three-run homer that was Cleveland’s first hit in nine at-bats with runners in scoring position.
The longball is the way to get to Romero – 23 of the 37 earned runs against him this season have come via the home run.
Notes: Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston confirmed Brian Tallet will come out of the bullpen to start Saturday when the team needs a fifth starter versus Tampa Bay. Thanks to a series of off-days, the Jays are going mostly with a four-man rotation for the next few weeks. … It was Korean Heritage Night at the Rogers Centre but the Indians decided to rest South Korean OF Shin-soo Choo, who played in 92 of his team’s first 95 outings. Some fans chanted, “We want Choo!” … Pavano also gave up four homers May 11, 2005 against Seattle while pitching for the Yankees. … Wells, who hit .372 (16-for-43) prior to the all-star break, feels he’s finally getting comfortable at the plate again. “The last few weeks I’ve felt a little more like myself,” he said. “When I’ve had 0-for-4s or 0-for-3s, it’s like all right, I could have easily had two or three hits. My thought process now is completely different than it was a couple of months ago.” … The Jays last hit five homers in a game May 30, 2006 versus Boston.
