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 Randy Ruiz ran Angels starter Trevor Bell out of the game with a three-run double on Sunday. (Sun Media/Dave Abel) |
Randy Ruiz is hungry, and so too is Travis Snider.
Both hitters reside in the bottom part of the Blue Jays batting order, a zone that has been all but dead for most of the past two months.
Ruiz and Snider, however, have a lot to prove and are busting their chops with each at-bat, trying to improve, trying to impress.
Ruiz, a career minor-leaguer, and Snider, the organization’s phenom and future star, combined to play a big role in the Jays’ 8-3 ambushing today of the AL West Division-leading Angels of Los Angeles. They have become the one spark in an area of the batting order that all too often has been flat-lining.
Ruiz, who has clubbed three solo home runs in his first 10 games with the Jays, delivered the key blow yesterday when he sliced a two-out double down the right-field line to drive in three runs in the second inning that ran the score to 6-0 and ran Angels starter Trevor Bell out of the game.
Snider, for good measure, hit a solo homer leading off the third, his second since being recalled on Tuesday and his fifth overall. On the day, he was 3-for-3 and also made a hard slide into second in the seventh to break up a double play.
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“He’s done OK since he’s been here,” manager Cito Gaston said of Ruiz. “He has been trying to break through to the big leagues for a long time and hopefully he’s going to get a chance to play up here for a while.”
If Snider and Ruiz can contribute consistently, as they did yesterday, it goes a long way toward filling out Gaston’s lineup.
“It’s been a struggle for the bottom of our lineup all year,” Gaston said. “It (their production) is going to help because those guys are down in the bottom of our lineup and pretty much all year we’ve been having three guys (Marco Scutaro, Aaron Hill and Adam Lind) carrying this team. We do need help from the fourth spot all the way down to the ninth spot and today they did help out.”
Their production also went a long way in making for an easier outing for rookie lefty Ricky Romero, who lasted six innings and won for the first time in his four starts to move to 11-5 on the season.
Romero blanked the Angels through the opening five frames but gave up two runs on four hits in the sixth.
His final pitch of the game, No. 107, was his biggest. It came on a 3-2 count against Chone Figgins with two out and runners on second and third — a high fastball but one Figgins couldn’t lay off. He swung and missed to keep the score 8-2.
Romero, who sports a 3.91 ERA, is a definite rookie-of-the-year candidate in the AL, even though he is not thinking along those lines.
“A lot of the guys joke and say: ‘Rookie of the year, rookie of the year.’ But I try not to look at it like that,” he said. “If I win it, it’s going to be an unbelievable accomplishment for me personally, but I’ve just got to take it start by start.”
While two of his rookie teammates — Brett Cecil and Marc Rzepczynski — will be shut down the first week of September, Romero says he is strong and intends to pitch to the end of the season.
“I’ve already told them I’m fresh, I’m ready to go through the whole year,” he said. “If I’m going to be one of the guys here, I feel like I need to get on the consistent year-to-year thing.”