Red Sox 16, Blue Jays 4
David Ortiz and Jason Varitek had three-run homers in a big fifth inning and Marco Scutaro finished with four hits as the Boston Red Sox handed Brandon Morrow the worst beating of his career in a 16-4 rout of the host Toronto Blue Jays on Saturday.
Morrow (2-4) surrendered a career-high nine runs on 10 hits over 4 1/3 frames as his ERA ballooned to 5.63. The hard-throwing righthander had allowed just seven earned runs over his previous three games combined, spanning 21 innings.
Boston was already up 5-2 before breaking things wide open with a seven-run fifth. With two men on, Varitek smacked a homer to right-center field after J.D. Drew had opened the floodgates with an RBI single one batter earlier.
Ortiz added a moonshot to right field to cap the inning, his 17th homer of the campaign and his third in the past five games to help extend Boston's winning streak to eight games. The gregarious designated hitter is 14-for-34 with four home runs and 12 RBIs so far in June.
Boston used a balanced attack en route to its biggest offensive explosion against the Blue Jays since 2001. Every starter except for Jed Lowrie had a hit and scored a run, and all nine starters had at least one RBI.
Red Sox hurler John Lackey (4-5) cruised to the victory, scattering four runs on six hits over six innings. He walked two and struck out eight for his first win over Toronto since May 10, 2010 - a span of five starts.
Things were so bad for the Blue Jays that infielder Mike McCoy was called into pitching duty in the ninth inning. He had the best performance of the day by a Toronto pitcher, tossing a scoreless inning as what remained of the Rogers Centre crowd gave him a warm ovation.
Edwin Encarnacion had a two-run homer and Rajai Davis added a two-run double to account for the lone Toronto offense. Jose Bautista went homerless for the 13th straight game - his longest streak since last June - and remained stuck on 20 homers for the season.