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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Alcides Escobar is a maestro with his glove, making the kinds difficult of plays at shortstop that has helped to make the Kansas City Royals one of the best defensive teams in baseball. On Wednesday night, Escobar showed he can swing the bat a bit, too. His two-run double in the seventh inning proved to be the difference in a tense 4-2 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays. "Hes been very consistent," Royals manager Ned Yost said. "Hes always been an important part of our club because of his defence. He saves runs in the field. But when you add offence to that, he becomes a very special player." Eric Hosmer drove in the other two runs for the Royals, whose bullpen blew a 2-0 lead for young starter Yordano Ventura before holding on to beat Toronto with a late rally for the second straight night. Kansas City won the series opener 10-7 behind a six-run eighth inning. Kelvin Herrera (1-1) stranded runners on second and third in the seventh, and Wade Davis struck out Jose Reyes to leave the bases loaded in the eighth. Greg Holland worked around a double in the ninth for his seventh save in seven tries. "You play 162 games. Youre going to see a lot of things happen," Holland said. "The mark of a good bullpen is when you have guys pick each other up when they get in jams." Drew Hutchison (1-2) allowed all four runs on five hits in seven innings for Toronto. The 23-year-old right-hander, who missed last season after Tommy John surgery, kept the Royals mostly off balance until Escobar guided his double down the left-field line with two outs in the seventh. Jimmy Paredes and Salvy Perez scored easily to give Kansas City the lead. "I got ahead of him. I went right at him. I thought I made a good pitch," Hutchison said. "Thats a situation where I expect myself to thrive and get the job done, but I didnt." The Royals improved to 14-0 when scoring at least four runs -- they remain 0-12 falling short of that mark. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays lost for the sixth time in their last seven games. Toronto also lost outfielder Melky Cabrera in the sixth inning when he was hit in the left shin by a pitch from Danny Duffy. Cabrera needed to be helped off the field, though X-rays taken at the ballpark came back negative and a team spokesman said he was day to day. The Royals manufactured a 1-0 lead through driving rain in the first inning with a double by Nori Aoki, a sacrifice bunt and Hosmers sacrifice fly. They tacked on another run in the fourth when Hosmer followed a double by Omar Infante with one of his own. As long as Ventura was pitching, it seemed that would be enough. The Blue Jays struggled to catch up to the 22-year-olds triple-digit fastball, managing just two hits over five innings. But they were more successful at avoiding stuff off the plate, driving up his pitch count and forcing him from the game after five innings and 92 pitches. "It was cold out there," Ventura said through a translator, fellow starter Jeremy Guthrie. "Naturally, it was a little more difficult to command." Thats when Royals manager Ned Yost called on Duffy, who hit Cabrera in the left shin with his first pitch. Cabrera dropped to the grass in foul territory and stayed there several minutes, eventually getting helped through the dugout and to the clubhouse by the Blue Jays trainers. Duffy proceeded to walk Jose Bautista on five pitches and was yanked for Aaron Crow, who gave up singles to Edwin Encarnacion and Juan Francisco that tied the game 2-all. Crow finally escaped the inning, and the Royals bullpen held Toronto down the rest of the way. "Its frustrating, but at the end of the day I need to do a better job to give us a chance to win after we came back and scored two runs," Hutchison said. "I was in complete control going into the seventh. It comes down to that its on me and I need to get the job done." NOTES: Toronto left 11 runners on base. ... Bautista finished with 30 walks in April, matching Fred McGriffs club record for a single month. ... Blue Jays INF Brett Lawrie (sore back) was held out of the lineup. Manager John Gibbons called him day to day. ... RHP Jeremy Guthrie starts the series finale Thursday night for Kansas City. LHP Mark Buehrle starts for Toronto. Cheap Basketball Shoes Wholesale .Y. -- Mark Steenhuis scored four goals and added two assists to lead the Buffalo Bandits over the Toronto Rock 12-10 in National Lacrosse League action on Saturday. Cheap Basketball Shoes For Sale . -- Chris Crawford hit a 3-pointer with 1:36 left to put Memphis ahead to stay, and the 21st-ranked Tigers beat seventh-ranked Louisville 72-66 Saturday, sweeping the season series from the Cardinals. http://www.basketballshoescheap.net/. After a first half in which he thought "the lid was on the basket," the Toronto Raptors coach watched his squad mount a second half surge to defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers 98-91. Clearance Basketball Shoes Online . -- Rory McIlroy birdied his last two holes Thursday for a 7-under 63 to take the lead after one round of the Honda Classic. Wholesale Basketball Shoes China . Watch all the action unfold live on TSN and TSN Mobile TV at 7:30pm et/4:30pm pt. You can also watch the game live with the debut of Wednesday Night Hockey on TSN.ca and chat throughout the game with TSN.PRETORIA, South Africa -- Oscar Pistorius will probably testify at his trial later this week, a defence attorney said Tuesday after prosecutors rested their case against the double-amputee runner who is accused of murder in his girlfriends death. In a rare public comment, Pistorius said he was going through "a tough time" as the case advanced. "Weve got a lot ahead of us," he told reporters after the court adjourned. Defence lawyer Brian Webber said Pistorius is "likely" to take the stand to open the defence case. "I dont think we have a choice. Its a question of when," Webber said of Pistorius testimony, which legal experts describe as critical because the judge will have a chance to assess firsthand whether he is credible. The case will be decided by Judge Thokozile Masipa with help from two assessors. South African courts do not have a jury system. After the prosecution rested, defence lawyer Barry Roux asked for time to consult some of the 107 state witnesses who had not testified against Pistorius, who admits shooting Reeva Steenkamp through the closed door of a toilet cubicle last year. Masipa adjourned the trial until Friday so Roux could prepare his arguments that Pistorius killed the 29-year-old model by accident, thinking she was an intruder in his home. Pistorius has sometimes reacted emotionally in the courtroom. He shed tears this week during testimony about text messages that he and Steenkamp exchanged in the weeks before her death on Feb. 14, 2013. In earlier testimony, he retched and vomited at a pathologists description of Steenkamps gunshot wounds. At other times, he has appeared calm, taking notes during testimony and conferring with his lawyers during breaks. The 27-year-old Olympian once basked in global publicity stemming from his achievements on the track but became an almost silent, somewhat cryptic figure after Steenkamps death, his account only outlined in legal statements that were carefully tailored by his high-powered legal team. Earlier Tuesday, Roux sought to show that Pistorius had a loving relationship with his girlfriend, referring to telephone messages in whhich they exchanged warm compliments and said they missed each other.dddddddddddd. The testimony contrasted with several messages read in court a day earlier in which Pistorius and Steenkamp argued, part of the prosecutions effort to demonstrate that the athlete killed his girlfriend after an intense disagreement. In those messages, Steenkamp told the runner that she was sometimes scared by his behaviour, which included jealous outbursts in front of other people. Roux noted that the tense messages amounted to a tiny fraction of the roughly 1,700 texts that police Capt. Francois Moller, a cellphone expert, extracted from the couples mobile devices. Roux noted a Jan. 19 exchange in which Reeva sent Pistorius a photo of herself in a hoodie and making a kissing face and asked, "You like it?" "I love it," Pistorius said, according to the message. "So warm," Steenkamp responded. Roux was also granted permission to show video broadcast by Sky News that showed Pistorius and Steenkamp kissing in a convenience store. Chief prosecutor Gerrie Nel questioned the relevance of the store video, saying he could ask for a courtroom viewing of another video, also broadcast by Sky News, which shows Pistorius at a gun range, firing a shotgun and using a pistol to shoot a watermelon, which bursts on impact. Nel also said many messages of affection between the couple were brief, in contrast to the texted arguments, which were far longer and dwelled on their relationship in greater depth. Earlier, Moller said Steenkamp connected to the Internet on her cellphone hours before Pistorius killed her. She made the connection just before 9 p.m. on Feb. 13, 2013, and the connection lasted for more than 11 hours, possibly because social media programs were still open. Mollers extraction of data also shed light on what appeared to be frantic calls made from one of Pistorius cellphones after the killing. They included a call to the administrator of the housing estate where Pistorius lived at 3:19 a.m. on Feb. 14, a call a minute later to an ambulance service and a call a minute after that to the housing estate security. ' ' '