TORONTO — Tensions were high, R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball was dazzling and the new-look Toronto Blue Jays appear ready to go up against the big boys in the American League.
Dickey threw seven masterful shutout innings, manager John Gibbons and reliever Aaron Sanchez were ejected and the Blue Jays’ bats were popping in a 5-2 victory over the Kansas City Royals in front of a sellout crowd Sunday at Rogers Centre.
The Blue Jays rode the wave of a big week of trades to take three-of-four games from the top team in the AL, doing so in dramatic fashion.
"I think they’re used to pushing people around," Dickey said of the Royals. "So when they come onto the playground and there’s a kid that is bigger than they are for a day I think it probably pisses them off. And I can’t blame them. That’s part of their swagger."
After adding Troy Tulowitzki and David Price, among others, the Blue Jays have plenty of swagger, too. Toronto (54-52) is one game back of Minnesota for the second AL wild-card spot, with the Twins in town beginning Monday for a four-game series.
Gibbons didn’t think beating the Royals (62-42) three times sent any kind of message because "it’s not like you came out and steamrolled somebody or won a football game by 50 points." What the Blue Jays did was show they could go power-for-power against the defending league champions.
"With the moves that we made to bolster the roster, this was going to be a really good test for us," said first baseman Chris Colabello, who hit a two-run home run in the fourth inning. "Obviously we want to put ourselves in a position where we know we can compete with the best teams in the league and outplay them."
The Blue Jays’ most impressive showing came Sunday in front of a raucous crowd of 45,736 and in what Colabello called a "playoff atmosphere." Part of that was thanks to the hot tempers that came when Kansas City starter Edinson Volquez hit Josh Donaldson with a pitch in the first inning.
Donaldson, who was 6 for 15 with two home runs and seven RBIs in the first three games of the series, was not happy about getting plunked in the back with a 94 mph sinker and exchanged words with Volquez on the way to first.
"He’s a little baby," Volquez said. "He was crying like a baby."
Donaldson said home-plate umpire Jim Wolf could’ve ejected Volquez right then and there because everyone knew it was intentional. But Donaldson didn’t want that because he thought Volquez "was pretty good hittin’."
Wolf warned the teams in line with the usual protocol, but the Blue Jays were livid when reliever Ryan Madson wasn’t tossed for hitting Tulowitzki in the seventh. When Donaldson got buzzed by a pitch in the next at-bat, he got in Wolf’s face.
"He got mad at everybody like he was Barry Bonds. He’s not Barry Bonds," Volquez said. "He’s got three years in the league. We’ve been around longer than he has."
Jose Bautista and Gibbons ushered Donaldson away, and Gibbons was tossed for the third time this season. But when Wolf ejected Blue Jays reliever Aaron Sanchez in the eighth for hittin Alcides Escobar, Gibbons, Donaldson and Volquez were at the forefront of a bench-clearing fracas.
"Jim Wolf I have a lot of respect for him behind the plate; I don’t think he made a lot of the right decisions today," Donaldson said. "That’s what you end up getting out of it, games like that — you get bench-clearing — When it never even had to go that route."
Volquez and Royals manager Ned Yost said they expected someone to get hit and said it was intentional. Sanchez defended himself, arguing his pitch just got away.
"If I wanted to send a message I would’ve sent a message to their big guys," he said. "I think it was kind of crap, but we’ll move on. We got a ‘W."’
Dickey’s seven innings of two-hit baseball and his six strikeouts on short rest were a big part of that. Coming in with a 7.23 earned-run average on three days’ rest in seven previous starts, Dickey was "as good as we’ve ever seen him," according to Gibbons.
Toronto’s bats were as advertised, too, with Colabello’s home run, Bautista’s RBI ground-rule double and two more runs produced by newcomers Tulowitzki on a single and left fielder Ben Revere on a sacrifice fly. Ben Zobrist answered for the Royals with a two-run shot of his own, his third home run in two games.
While Donaldson said playoff-race baseball doesn’t have to be like this, "it was today." The Blue Jays were at their best in the middle of it.
"It was awesome to hear the crowd get excited with us," Colabello said. "It’s everything you want the game to be."
Notes — Price will make his Blue Jays debut Monday afternoon against the Twins, who lost in 11 innings Sunday to the Seattle Mariners. … Robert Osuna picked up his seventh save of the season. … Donaldson was named the Blue Jays’ player of the month of July after hitting .287 with seven homers and 24 RBI.
