TORONTO — Aaron Sanchez tied a season high with eight strikeouts, Aledmys Diaz hit his 17th home run as part of an early offensive explosion, and the Toronto Blue Jays avoided the sweep with a 10-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday.
Making his third start since coming off the disabled list Aug. 25, Sanchez gave up three earned runs on six hits against two walks in a 98-pitch, six-inning performance for his first win since June 3.
Diaz finished 2 for 4, adding a double, a walk and two runs scored for Toronto (63-76). Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Devon Travis each went 3 for 5 with an RBI and a run scored, while Billy McKinney added his fourth homer as the Jays pounded out 16 hits.
Sanchez (4-5) pitched just 36 innings over eight starts in 2017 due to a nagging blister after going 15-2 in a 2016 campaign that saw him lead the American League with a 3.00 earned-run average.
In two starts since returning from a freak injury suffered back in June where he got a finger on his pitching hand caught in a piece of luggage, Sanchez had an 11.88 earned-run average in a pair no decisions.
But after some early struggles Thursday, the big right-hander settled down for his first quality start since June 15, striking out eight batters for the fourth time in 2018.
Tampa starter Tyler Glasnow lasted just 2/3 of an inning, giving up seven earned runs on five hits with two walks, two wild pitches and two strikeouts in the shortest outing of his career as a starter.
Kevin Kiermaier went deep twice against Sanchez for his fifth and sixth homers for Tampa Bay (75-64).
The Rays came in leading the season series 9-2, including Tuesday's 4-0 victory — Tampa's third shutout over its division rivals of 2018. The visitors were also a season-best 12 games over .500, having won four in a row and 13 of their last 15.
Toronto, meanwhile, had lost seven of its last nine and avoided going 15 games under .500 for the first time since Sept. 26, 2013.
The Jays jumped on Glasnow in a bat-around first inning thanks to RBI singles by Justin Smoak, Kendrys Morales and Gurriel before Diaz blasted his 17th home run of the season to left to give Sanchez a comfortable 6-0 cushion.
Glasnow (1-5) then put two more runners on before Tampa manager Kevin Cash had seen enough, but Travis singled off Andrew Kittredge to score McKinney on Toronto's sixth hit of the night to make it 7-0.
The surge assured the Jays would avoid an ignominious place in baseball history after the Rays came in having held Toronto to five or fewer hits in seven straight games to tie the major league record (since 1920) set by the Baltimore Orioles against the Washington Senators in the late 1960s.
Having won the first two games of the series by a combined 11-1 score, Tampa responded with Kiermaier's solo shot to left centre in the top of the second.
The Rays then loaded the bases with two outs in the second, with Sanchez walking Mallex Smith to make it 7-2.
But the Jays starter rebounded by striking out Matt Duffy for the second time to end the threat.
Toronto loaded the bases in the bottom of the inning, but Kittredge stuck out both Danny Jansen and Jonathan Davis, who was making major league debut.
Kiermaier almost took Sanchez deep again in the top of the third, only to watch as Randal Grichuk leapt to make a great catch at the wall in right to end the inning.
The Rays centre-fielder waited between first and second base for Grichuk, landing a playful shove on his opponent.
McKinney made it 8-2 with a solo shot into the second deck in right off Vidal Nuno in the bottom of the fifth before Kiermaier belted his second homer of the evening to dead centre in the top of the sixth to cut it to 8-3.
Kiermaier, who has three two-homer games in his career and finished the night 2 for 4, hit a pair against Toronto back on Aug. 23 last season.
Fellow rookie Rowdy Tellez pinch hit for Davis in the bottom of the inning, doubling home Diaz on the first pitch of his first major league at-bat.
Sanchez gave way to Ryan Tepera for the seventh before Grichuk added an RBI single in the bottom of the inning to make it 10-3.
Notes: Attendance was 17,872. ... The Jays open a four-game series against the Josh Donaldson-less Cleveland Indians on Thursday. Toronto dealt the 2015 AL MVP to Cleveland last Friday for a player to be named later in the culmination of a messy divorce with the club. The Indians placed Donaldson on the disabled list so he can continue rehabbing a calf injury, meaning the 32-year-old third baseman will miss the series at Rogers Centre.
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