B.J. Ryan, right, and Gregg Zaun celebrate Monday's 1-0 Blue Jays triumph. (Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)Fredericton's Matt Stairs refused to let another strong pitching performance go to waste, homering to lift starter Dustin McGowan and the Toronto Blue Jays to a 1-0 victory over the visiting Chicago White Sox on Monday night.
Stairs clubbed a hanging curveball from Javier Vazquez over the wall in left-centre field to break a scoreless stalemate in the bottom of the seventh inning.
"I was praying for contact," Stairs said. "I was sitting changeup every pitch throughout the night and he made me look stupid in my first at-bat, even when I was sitting on it.
"I got lucky he threw a curveball and probably wanted to bounce it. He kept it up a little and it was down in that hockey swing."
It marked his fourth home run this season and the 245th of his career — second-most among Canadian sluggers.
Larry Walker of Maple Ridge, B.C., homered 383 times in a stellar career spanning 17 seasons between 1989 and 2005.
"We needed that, no question about that," Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. "And we have started to play good ball at home, which we weren't doing earlier in the year."
Shannon Stewart had three hits and McGowan pitched 7 1/3 scoreless innings as the Blue Jays (16-17) swept the four-game series and extended their season-high winning streak to five games.
McGowan (2-2) scattered four hits and struck out six batters.
Closer B.J. Ryan walked three consecutive batters to load the bases with one out in the ninth inning, but he registered his fifth save by getting Pablo Ozuna to ground into a 1-2-3 double play.
"It was a heartbreaker," White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said. "Everybody got excited a little bit because we finally got something going and, all of a sudden, the double-play ends it."
Toronto's pitching staff has been remarkably stingy of late, yielding just 12 runs in the last nine games.
Moreover, each starter has lasted at least 6 2/3 innings over the span.
"I'm just trying to pick up where the other guys left off from," McGowan said. "I don't want to be the one to mess up this string of starts for us."
"God love them," Stairs said. "They go out there and do their job and don't let anything bother them.
"It would be very easy for them to lower their head and say, 'Where's the offence?' But these are the games you get through and how championship teams win — the pitching takes over, you get timely hitting and you win 1-0."
Vazquez (3-3) pitched well for the White Sox (14-16), permitting the one run on eight hits and a walk with nine strikeouts in 7 2/3 innings.
Vazquez excelled in his previous four starts at the Rogers Centre, posting a 2-0 record with a 1.59 earned-run average.
"The thing that makes me sad is the way we have pitched," Guillen said. "We cannot help our pitching staff to win games.
"They have kept us in games since we left Chicago and it has been one week with the same offence, with nothing really getting going."
Chicago, which was outscored 12-5 in the series, has lost six straight games and nine of 12.
"We have got to keep moving forward and expect the next day to be better than the one before, expect the next day to be a hot day where everyone hits well," White Sox outfielder Carlos Quentin said. "We know we have the potential to do some things offensively."
McGowan escapes early jam
After Juan Uribe opened the top of third inning with a single and Toby Hall doubled to put two runners in scoring position with none out, McGowan wiggled out of the jam by retiring the next three batters.
He got Orlando Cabrera on a groundout to shortstop, Quentin on a flyout to right field and struck out Jim Thome swinging.
"A lot of times there is going to be at least one run scored there, so you're just trying to stop as many as you can," McGowan said. "When you get a zero, it is really big."
Vazquez found himself in a predicament in the fourth inning as Stewart and Scott Rolen hit one-out singles, but Rolen got caught in a rundown for the second out, and Stairs grounded out to second.
Toronto threatened in the sixth inning as Stewart tripled with two out, but Vazquez retired Rolen on a groundout to short for the final out.
After Stairs put Toronto up 1-0 in the seventh, Chicago nearly tied it in the eighth inning when Uribe singled with the one out off McGowan, who was relieved by Jesse Carlson.
When the rookie reliever hit pinch-hitter A.J. Pierzynski with a pitch, Shawn Camp was summoned from the bullpen and snuffed the threat by getting Cabrera on a groundout and Quentin on a flyout.
Uribe had two of Chicago's four hits.
With files from the Associated Press
