TORONTO — Chicago first base coach Daryl Boston will often blow a whistle from the dugout when the White Sox make a nice defensive play or before a batter steps up to the plate.
He might want to keep it in his pocket the next time Josh Donaldson is at the dish.
Donaldson put the Blue Jays on the board with a solo shot in the sixth inning on Monday night. It helped trigger the Toronto offence in a 4-2 victory at Rogers Centre.
Russell Martin added a go-ahead two-run blast in the seventh inning and Aledmys Diaz tacked on an insurance run with a solo shot in the eighth.
After touching home plate, Donaldson raised his hand to his mouth as if he were blowing a whistle. He held the pose for a few seconds while looking at Boston in the opposing dugout.
"As soon as I stepped into the box, he started blowing it before anything even happened," Donaldson said. "So I felt like I’d return the favour."
Boston said it was all done in fun. He was chuckling in the dugout after Donaldson gave him the gears.
"I was informed he was not particularly thrilled about the whistle and he showed me that he was not," Boston said. "I had hit the whistle a couple of times hard before he went to the plate and he responded.
"You can pin that homer on me."
It was Donaldson’s first homer of the year. With Curtis Granderson aboard after a walk, Martin hit his first home run by turning on a 1-2 pitch from former Blue Jays pitcher Danny Farquhar (1-1).
Toronto stretched its winning streak to three games with a second straight comeback win. The Blue Jays (3-2) scored four runs in the eighth inning for a 7-4 win over the New York Yankees a day earlier.
"I feel like we’ve always been like the big-inning kind of team," Martin said. "We don’t know when it’s going to come, but we know we’ve got it in us."
Ryan Tepera worked a scoreless eighth inning before Diaz hit his first homer of the year. Closer Roberto Osuna pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for his second save.
Wellington Castillo hit two solo shots for the White Sox (2-1).
Starters Reynaldo Lopez of Chicago and Jaime Garcia of Toronto were in fine form over the first few innings.
The White Sox had a good chance in the third when Yolmer Sanchez stole second and went to third base on a Martin throwing error. But Sanchez was caught leaning for home on a grounder to third baseman Yangervis Solarte and was tagged out after a rundown.
In the fourth, Castillo opened the scoring by launching a rainbow shot into the second deck. It was the first homer of the season for the Chicago catcher.
Donaldson was the designated hitter for a fourth straight game as he works through a "dead-arm" issue. He plans to return to third base on Tuesday night.
Garcia threw six innings of four-hit ball, allowing one earned run and two walks. He had seven strikeouts in his Blue Jays’ debut.
"Overall I thought it was a great outing, what he did," said Toronto manager John Gibbons. "But that’s not him at his best either though."
The left-hander was replaced by Seung Hwan Oh (1-0), who gave up a solo homer to Castillo in the seventh. It was Castillo’s sixth career multi-homer game.
Lopez struck out six and allowed two hits, two walks and one earned run over six innings. Announced attendance was 16,629 and the game took two hours 51 minutes to play.
Notes: Sanchez was hit by pitches on two occasions. … Blue Jays outfielder Steve Pearce (fever) was not available. … The White Sox have tabbed right-hander Miguel Gonzalez (0-0) to start Tuesday against Toronto southpaw J.A. Happ (0-1). … Blue Jays first baseman Justin Smoak was named American League player of the week on Monday. He had seven hits and two home runs last week.
[relatedlinks]
