Blue Jays pound Rangers, Derek Holland in decisive fashion

After consecutive walk-off wins, the Toronto Blue Jays did it the old-fashioned way Thursday night.

They clobbered the Texas Rangers 12-2 at Rogers Centre to put an emphatic stamp on the four-game series, winning it 3-1.

The Blue Jays jumped on Derek Holland and kept jumping. After batting around and scoring five in the first, they did it again in the third, scoring six runs this time on five hits, including a three-run homer by Edwin Encarnacion.

“Nothing was happening. I didn’t execute, didn’t hit my spots, didn’t do anything right,” he said. “I didn’t give my team a chance, leaving balls over the middle. This is too good a ballclub to leave balls over the middle, and obviously you saw the damage.”

After throwing 32 pitches in the first, he threw 21 in the second, including an 11-pitch at-bat by Josh Donaldson before he fouled out to first base for the first out. He worked around a two-out walk for a scoreless inning.

In the third, however, four of the first five Blue Jays reached on hits, including Kevin Pillar’s two-run double to left. Encarnacion’s three-run homer to left made the score 11-1 and ended Holland’s night.

Holland allowed eight earned runs total in his first 29 innings before Thursday’s start. It’s the first time in 2016 the Rangers’ starter didn’t go at least five innings.

“The six spot there in the third really is what pretty well did us in,” manager Jeff Banister said. “He couldn’t find a way to get the ball down. When you leave mistakes up out over the plate these guys can make you pay.”

The big early lead allowed Blue Jays starter J.A. Happ to fill the zone with strikes. He scattered six hits and a walk over seven innings. Prince Fielder’s two-out single to left scored Nomar Mazara in the first, but the Rangers sputtered for the rest of the night before three consecutive singles in the ninth added a second run. Ian Desmond’s fourth-inning double was the lone extra-base hit.

“It’s a challenge,” Banister said of the early deficit. “It puts their pitcher in a position where he can relax and attack the strike zone, and that’s what he did. It’s not fun.”

“We have to find a way to score runs on the road, string some at-bats together and mount an offensive attack,” said Banister, whose club starts a three-game series Friday in Detroit. “Derek has good stuff. He has pitched well. This is not something in his nature. They executed their plan, we couldn’t execute ours.”

This story was originally published May 5, 2016 at 10:39 PM with the headline "Blue Jays pound Rangers, Derek Holland in decisive fashion."