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Jose Bautista gets his revenge as Blue Jays pound Rangers

TORONTO ON- OCTOBER 04 Hyun Soo Kim #25 of the Baltimore Orioles and Adam Jones #10 react in the seventh inning after a fan threw a beverage onto the field during the American League Wild Card game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on Oct

No bat-flip this time. After he homered, a fan threw the ball nearly back to the infield.

The Jays slugger was happy to keep the focus on baseball rather than rehash Toronto's recent Hatfield-and-McCoy-like feuding with the Rangers.

"I have a couple of home runs in my career and I think I've only flipped it once", Bautista said. "Coming off having to claw our way back into the playoffs and the wild-card game and putting up a lot of runs early feels good, especially when you're backing a start like Marco had today".

It was Bautista's fourth home run in his last eight post-season at-bats.

The last of the Rangers' four hits off Estrada was Elvis Andrus' leadoff triple in the ninth.

Rangers manager Jeff Banister said Wednesday that Darvish is up to the necessary level after he had Tommy John surgery in 2015.

"Two outs away from finishing it".

"I was looking at Gibby the whole time, I was yelling, 'I got it, I got it, '" said Estrada. "That's all that matters".

"In this situation, yeah", Bautista said of the playoffs.

"I don't change anything".

Estrada is like baseball's answer to Canadiens goaltender Carey Price. "It's just been blown out of proportion because of the moment past year".

Toronto's performance had many rushing to the record books.

The Jays face the Rangers in Game 2 of the ALDS on Friday afternoon in Texas at 1:08 P.M. ET.

The series is a rematch of last year's ALDS, which Toronto won in five games.

It was 32 degrees under the sun at first pitch before a sellout crowd of 47,434 that had little to cheer about at Globe Life Park.

While Hamels pitched well the first two innings (no hits, no runs) he gave up five runs in the third, when he threw 42 pitches.

When Texas had errors on three consecutive plays in that shaky seventh inning of Game 5 last October, leading up to Bautista's homer, Andrus had two of them.

Melvin Upton Jr. led off the fourth with a solo home run to make it 6-0.

Josh Donaldson and Jose Batista things going, each driving in a run during a five-run third.

Much of that was due to the brilliance of Estrada, who snookered the Texas lineup all day with a curveball and changeup to complement an effective fastball.

Those Rangers were nowhere to be found Thursday. Adrian Beltre had an excuse-me single in the second inning; Elvis Andrus had a solid single to lead off the sixth but was thrown out trying to steal second; and Carlos Beltran singled in the eighth but was wiped out on a double play.

Blue Jays: Closer Roberto Osuna came out of the AL wild-card with shoulder soreness, and it was never clear beforehand if the right-hander was available for the ALDS opener.

Toronto outhit Texas 13-4. Texas finished only three games over.500 on the road this year. The ensuing brawl resulted in discipline against 14 players and staff.

The lone blemish on Hamels' line in the first two innings was an early walk to Donaldson.

Already trailing 2-0 with two out in the third and the bases loaded, Rangers' starter Cole Hamels thought he was off the hook when Troy Tulowitski sent a fly ball to deep center that Ian Desmond seemed to have in his sight. The ball left Tulowitzki's bat at 102 m.p.h. and travelled 395 feet.

Just imagine, for a moment, what it would look like if the Toronto Blue Jays' starting rotation continues to shut down opponents the way it has over the past few weeks, and the offence suddenly surges the way it can. The pitcher has exhibited that emotion at several different times this season. Estrada threw a total of 44 in his first four innings.

The home runs boosted the Blue Jays in a game in which they got outhit 13-6. Toronto has won four straight overall, including an 11-inning, 5-2 victory over Baltimore in the AL wild-card game Tuesday night. "And we've got some characters in the game", Gibbons said.

"Given how our club has played all year long, and we've been in these type of situations before, look, we've come back and played well after these type of games". And with the veteran group that we have in there, I don't worry about the collateral damage in a game like this.

"Games are too important".

The idea of statement games is overblown, and you'd have a hard time convincing a statistician that momentum counts for more than a hill of beans in pro sports, but this was as good a Game 1 as the Jays could have hoped for.

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Jose Bautista gets his revenge as Blue Jays pound Rangers