Jays jump all over Greinke

The first time the Blue Jays met Zack Greinke this season, the Kansas City Royals' ace had already fireballed his way through four starts - all of them wins - without surrendering a single earned run. He finally gave up a couple to the Jays , but he also shut down what was then the hottest-hitting team in Baseball by mixing a lively fastball with an assortment of breaking pitches that destroyed their timing and balance. So, in the hitters' meeting before last night's rematch at the Rogers Centre, the Jays decided to counter the season's most dominant pitcher (8-1, 1.10 ERA before last night) with a straightforward strategy: stay away from breaking pitches and attack the fastball. When Greinke delivered a 93-m.p.h fastball to open the game, Marco Scutaro smashed it for a ground-rule double and established a pattern that held up throughout the Jays' 9-3 win. "All we really wanted to do as a team was lay off his slider," said Adam Lind, who went 2-for-4 with a double. "If we could do that, we could maybe force him into throwing some fastballs over the plate. ... Last time we were swinging at a lot of his off-speed pitches and we took a lot of those tonight." Greinke entered last night's game as the top starter in the majors so far this season, and the most consistent performer on a slumping Royals squad that has now lost eight straight. Before last night he led the majors in ERA and complete games (five), and ranked second in strikeouts per base on balls (7.33). Opposing hitters had batted just .211 against him. Before this season, though, Greinke had posted an uninspiring 34-41 record, managing just one win and a 6.65 ERA in five career decisions at the Rogers Centre. And it didn't help that he pitched during the Jays' weekly "Flashback Fridays" promotion. Last night, several members of the 1989 team showed up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their division championship. And the current crop of Blue Jays turned the clocks all the way back to April, when they banged out base hits relentlessly and led the majors in nearly every offensive category. They tagged Greinke for five doubles, including three by Scutaro, and a pair of solo homers, snapping his streak of 111 innings without allowing a home run. "He got some pitches where he didn't want to get them and our guys hit them," manager Cito Gaston said. "He's a good pitcher and I'm glad we don't have to see him any more this year." The win allowed the Jays to stay close to the first-place Yankees, whose game against Tampa Bay was rained out, and with Boston, which lost at home to Texas. But most importantly for Gaston, the win showed that starter Ricky Romero, while admittedly not pitching as well as he did in April (when he went 2-0 with a 1.71 ERA) is closer to regaining that form. "It was a team win but it's very important that Ricky got out there and pitched well," Gaston said. "Hopefully it's a start and he's on his way back to where he was, because we could really use him." Romero cruised through six scoreless innings before the Royals rattled him in the seventh. With one runner on, right fielder Jose Guillen blasted a skyscraping homer to left field, and designated hitter Mike Jacobs followed with a solo shot to centre. "I've got some work to do and I haven't gotten the feel for that changeup that I had earlier in the year," said Romero, who missed a month after straining an abdominal muscle. "It's something that I'm working on. It all comes down to my release point and I'm a little off right now." mcampbell @ thestar.ca