CLEVELAND – It doesn’t pay to pitch to Jose Bautista. Actually, it does – you pitch to him and you pay dearly.

The Indians learned that lesson the hard way Saturday night at Progressive Field, with Bautista’s leadoff homer in the 10th inning off closer Chris Perez lifting the Blue Jays to a 5-4 win.

It was one of two homers on the night and the third of the series for Bautista, who leads the majors with 31 homers on the season, a year after posting a big league-high 54 homers.

“We fought until the end, but Bautista pretty much beat us,” said Cleveland manager Manny Acta, whose team lost for the second time in three games to Toronto but still maintained its half-game lead over the Tigers in the Central Division standings. “What he’s doing right now is pretty ridiculously good.”

It was the fifth multihomer game of the season for Bautista, who put the Jays in front 2-1 with a two-out solo homer in the third off Indians starter Josh Tomlin.

Toronto scored once in the first and never surrendered the lead, though the Indians tied the game twice before Bautista’s final blast.

The Indians got an uncharacteristic subpar outing from Tomlin, who allowed four runs (three earned) on seven hits over six innings. The right-hander surrendered three of his runs in the first four innings.

“I definitely didn’t have very good stuff,” said Tomlin, who had won three of his previous four starts without a loss. “The command wasn’t there all the way tonight. I left too many pitches over the plate. I just tried to battle as much as I could.”

Tomlin has pitched at least five innings in each of his first 30 career starts, the only MLB pitcher to accomplish that since 1919, but he was outperformed by Toronto starter Brandon Morrow.

Morrow allowed three runs on just three hits, striking out eight over eight innings.

The right-hander surrendered only two hits over the first five innings, but one of them was a big one, with Grady Sizemore tying the game at 3 on a two-run homer in the fourth.

With Morrow out of the game and Jon Rauch on to close it out for Toronto, the Indians offense, which went scoreless over the four previous innings, came to life in the ninth.

Travis Hafner got it started with a leadoff single, then was replaced by pinch runner Austin Kearns. Both Carlos Santana and Sizemore made outs before Travis Buck offered up a quality at-bat in a pressure-packed situation.

After falling behind 0-2 on two called strikes, Buck worked an 11-pitch at-bat before stroking a double off the wall in left-center to score Kearns with the tying run.

The celebration was short-lived with Bautista connecting on a 1-0 fastball that was designated for the the outside corner and low but wound up over the middle of the plate.

“The way he’s going, he doesn’t even foul off pitches,” Acta said of Bautista, who has homered in six of his last nine games and nine of his last 17. “He squares everything up. Right now, he reminds me of the way Barry Bonds was in his prime. It’s pretty impressive.”

Acta was asked if he thought of walking Bautista prior to the pivotal at-bat.

“You can’t put the go-ahead run on first with no outs, plus, that’s my closer,” he said. “There’s no one better to try to get him out than Chris Perez.”

But the ingredients were there for a recipe for disaster with Perez facing the most dangerous hitter in baseball in the ninth.

It was a non-save situation for Perez, who has not fared well in those as of late. The right-hander has allowed runs in three of his last four outings without a save on the line, twice surrendering game-winning homers in that situation.

What was a strong possibility became reality when Perez grooved the fastball to Bautista.

“It sounded good off the bat, but it was pretty high,” Perez said. “I didn’t know if he got enough of it, but it kept going and going.”

Contact Chris Assenheimer at 329-7136 or cassenheimer@chroniclet.com. Fan him
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TODAY

• WHO: Cleveland vs. Toronto
• TIME: 1:05
• WHERE: Progressive Field
• PITCHERS: Carrasco (8-5, 3.95 ERA) vs. Cecil (1-4, 6.37)
• TV/RADIO: SportsTime Ohio; WEOL 930-AM, WTAM 1100-AM