Ryan Vilade stroked his first homer with Tampa Bay as the Rays won their fourth straight game, clipping the Toronto Blue Jays 5-1 on Monday night in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Acquired in a trade with Cincinnati last November, the outfielder belted a deep three-run homer in the first, his second career long ball, for an early three-run lead. He went 1-for-2 and was pinch-hit for in the fifth.
Coming off a four-hit game Sunday that featured a walk-off, 10th-inning single, Jonathan Aranda went 3-for-4 and is 9-for-13 in his past three games. Taylor Walls managed a single and two RBIs. Ben Williamson had two hits and a run.
Starter Nick Martinez (3-1) notched the win with five innings of one-run ball on five hits. He fanned four with a walk over 71 pitches.
The Blue Jays’ Yohendrick Pinango was 3-for-5 with a double and a run, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. singled in a run as the team posted 10 hits but just one run and one extra-base hit.
Starting pitcher Eric Lauer (1-4) allowed three runs on five hits in 4 1/3 innings. He struck out two and walked one.
With Chandler Simpson and Junior Caminero on and no outs in the first, Tampa Bay struck a huge blow when Vilade reached down below the zone and golfed Lauer’s curveball to left. The blast traveled 413 feet.
Toronto got one back by producing three consecutive singles in the third. After Pinango and Kazuma Okamoto produced hits, Guerrero drove in Pinango by reaching down and serving an RBI single to left.
Ian Seymour relieved Martinez in the sixth, and the Blue Jays put runners on first and second with two outs. But the Rays narrowly got Andres Gimenez on a slow roller that first baseman Aranda flipped to Seymour covering first to beat the hitter’s head-first slide.
Walls then drove in two runs in the bottom half, greeting reliever Mason Fluharty with a two-out, bases-loaded single to center to stretch it to 5-1.
Closer Bryan Baker came on in the ninth with two outs and two on, and he produced a flyout to right from Okamoto in a three-pitch at-bat for his ninth save in 11 chances.
