Michael Brantley had a two-run shot and the Indians outslugged the Toronto Blue

TORONTO (AP) — In one productive inning Logan Forsythe Jersey , Cleveland catcher Roberto Perez snapped the longest homer drought of his career and boosted his season RBI total by 50 percent.Perez hit his first home run since April 10 and drove in a career-high four, Jays 9-8 on Saturday, helping Cleveland inch closer to clinching a playoff berth.The Indians dropped their magic number to five for a third straight AL Central title.All of Perez’s RBIs came in Cleveland’s seven-run fifth inning. He began the outburst with a leadoff drive off right-hander Sean Reid-Foley, snapping a 50-game drought. Three batters later, Brantley connected, his 15th. Blue Jays pitchers issued five walks in the inning, including four straight at one stretch, the last of which was a bases-loaded walk to Jason Kipnis. Perez followed with a three-run double.“It feels good,” Perez said. “I’ve been working hard every day, coming in and doing my routine, and it’s paying off. It was just a matter of time. It’s been a long season. Hopefully I turn it on from now on.”Perez raised his average from .148 to .157 and increased his RBI total from eight to 12.“He put together one heck of a day,” Indians right-hander Adam Plutko said. “Even behind the dish, he stopped a few balls late in the game. He did a great job today.”Brantley returned to the lineup after missing the previous two games because of a sore left foot and went 2 for 4 with two walks.“We knew he was OK but it’s always nice to have him,” manager Terry Francona said.Josh Tomlin (1-5) got two outs for the win and Cody Allen, Cleveland’s seventh pitcher of the game, pitched around a one-out double in the ninth to earn his 26th save.Randal Grichuk homered twice for the Blue Jays http://www.dodgersfanproshop.com/authentic-mark-lowe-jersey , his fourth career multihomer game, and Rowdy Tellez hit his first career homer. The Blue Jays lost despite outhitting the Indians 18-11.“A little bit of a crazy game,” Francona said.Reid-Foley (1-3) made his fourth career start and allowed six runs and five hits in 4 2/3 innings. He walked a season-high five and struck out three.“If I have to trip on a couple of curbs and learn from it, I still have to keep my head up and have fun,” Reid-Foley said.Justin Shafer relieved and threw 10 consecutive balls. Perez’s bases-clearing double came on Shafer’s 12th pitch.Grichuk connected off Adam Plutko in the third, and he and Tellez chased Plutko by going back-to-back in the fifth. Grichuk’s homers were his 20th and 21st.The home run was Tellez’s seventh extra-base hit, the most by any player over his first four games since 1913.“It’s one of those surreal moments that you just dream about,” Tellez said. “It was pretty cool to do it here in front of the home fans.”Plutko matched his career worst by allowing five runs and gave up a career-high nine hits in 4 2/3 innings.Aledmys Diaz had four hits for Toronto, including three doubles.18 ISN’T ENOUGHThe Blue Jays lost a game in which they had 18 or more hits for the first time since a 10-inning road defeat to the Yankees on Sept. 22, 2007. The Indians won when allowing 18 or more hits for the first time since Aug. 23, 2006.SEVEN UPCleveland has had six seven-run innings this season, including three against Toronto.CRAZY EIGHTTellez is the first Blue Jays player with eight hits in his first four games. Danny Ainge, Aaron Hill, Lloyd Moseby and Travis Snider each had seven.TRAINER’S ROOMIndians: Josh Donaldson (left calf) made his second straight start at third base for Double-A Akron and went 1 for 3 in five innings. Donaldson will work out with the Indians in Tampa Bay on Monday and could be activated off the disabled list Tuesday.UP NEXTIndians RHP Mike Clevinger (10-7, 3.17) faces Blue Jays LHP Thomas Pannone (1-1, 4.58) in Sunday’s series finale. Clevinger has won four straight decisions and is unbeaten since July 28 at Detroit. Pannone Kenta Maeda Jersey , a former Indians minor leaguer, will make his third major league start in place of injured RHP Marcus Stroman (blister). LAS VEGAS (AP) — Ask baseball managers what they think about the dreaded shift, and most of them have the same answer.It’s not a problem if the hitters don’t make it one.“There’s an easy way to combat that,” Oakland’s Bob Melvin said. “Just hit the ball the other way.”It’s a simple enough solution, though certainly an obvious one. Who among us, after all, hasn’t screamed at a batter to push the ball the other way or even bunt for a sure hit when the defense is loaded up on one side of the infield?The guys in the dugout surely have, even if job security dictates they do their screaming silently.“If a guy can use the whole field, they’re not going to shift you,” the Marlins’ Don Mattingly said.Unfortunately, guys don’t use the whole field anymore. They haven’t for some time because they play baseball to make money and the players who make the most money try to hit the ball as hard as they can to the place they’re most comfortable hitting it.Hitters aren’t going to adapt. There’s no real incentive for them to go the other way, even when all the numbers add up.So while managers at this week’s winter meetings talked about players adjusting to situations and shifts, their real audience is the guys in the dugout. And they, for the most part, aren’t listening.Push one down the third base line for an easy hit? You’d have better luck getting Manny Machado to hustle down to first.“The majority of the hitters, I’d say 90 to 95 percent Matt Kemp Jersey , say to heck with it, I’m going to try to hit a homer and a double,” said Kansas City manager Ned Yost. “Our numbers for singles as a baseball league last year dropped way down. And you just lose strategy, you lose the ability to steal bases. You lose the ability to hit and run or bunt if you want to.”In other words, you’re losing a big part of baseball.The shift, if you haven’t noticed, is killing baseball. Maybe not by itself, but as part of a new analytics culture in the game that doesn’t value steals, sacrifice bunts, hit-and-runs or any kind of strategy that doesn’t always make sense when all the numbers are crunched.Major League Baseball has noticed, mainly because attendance was down last season and so were hits. Singles have been in decline for the last five years, and the league average of .248 was the worst in 46 years.Meanwhile, for the first time there were more strikeouts than hits in the game, and the World Series — at least on the Dodgers‘ side — was a badly flawed microcosm of what the game has become.That’s a big reason why baseball’s competition committee is looking at doing away with the shift, a move Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he is open to considering. Though baseball tends to move slow, there’s an outside chance both the commissioner’s office and the players’ union could agree to do something about the increasing use of the shift before next season.Banning the shift Rich Hill Jersey , of course, won’t magically make all the problems of the game go away. It might not change much at all, if you believe the analytics that show the shift mainly takes hits away from slow left-handed power hitters.But it’s a step toward making baseball look like baseball again. And it’s a step toward being more proactive when it comes to winning back fans turned off by the slow pace of games and the interminable periods in games where nothing ever seems to happen.“I just think that shift, it makes the game much, much more boring in my opinion,” said Yost, one of the few managers to take a stand against the shift.Thankfully for baseball, there is an easy solution.Two infielders on each side of second base. Both with at least one foot on the infield dirt.You know, like baseball used to be played.The guess is that it’s likely to happen, if only because no one but pitchers and the people in the analytics department have any love for the shift. That includes Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who used it so much last season that at times it seemed like third baseman Justin Turner was spending more time on the other side of the second base bag than in his normal position.Roberts said he believes baseball is a better game without the shift, though for now his immediate plans are to increase the time his hitters spend hitting to the opposite field in spring training to try to combat it.Here’s hoping they won’t need that extra practice.It’s time for the shift to go.