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Josh Donaldson celebrates with teammates after hitting a home run in the eighth inning at Rogers Centre on Friday.Kevin Sousa

Josh Donaldson hit two home runs and drove in five runs Friday night as the Toronto Blue Jays opened a six-game home stand with a 7-5 victory over the Boston Red Sox.

Donaldson delivered a two-run homer off Koji Uehera in the eighth after the Blue Jays squandered a 5-2 lead in the sixth and seventh innings.

After Ezequiel Carrera led off the inning with a bunt single, Donaldson showed off his power by driving the ball over the right field wall for his 13th homer of the season.

The 2015 American League most valuable player finished the game with four hits — falling just short of the cycle — after entering the game in a 1-for-13 slide.

Toronto (25-25), which won its first home game at Rogers Centre in three weeks, returned to the .500 mark and have now won six of its past eight games.

Toronto starter Aaron Sanchez allowed four runs (three earned) on five hits while striking out six over 6 2/3 innings. Joe Biagini (2-1) came on in relief and blew the lead, although earned the win after Donaldson's home run put the Jays ahead. Roberto Osuna earned his 11th save of the season with a perfect ninth.

Red Sox right-hander Joe Kelly allowed five runs and nine hits over 4 2/3 innings. Uehara was tagged with the loss.

Donaldson opened the scoring with a solo shot in the first inning by blasting his 12th home run of the season over the right-centre field wall.

Boston capitalized on Troy Tulowitzki's seventh error to leadoff the second inning to tie the game 1-1. Travis Shaw reached on the shortstop's errant throw to first base, and eventually came around on a ground ball by Jackie Bradley Jr.

Donaldson answered in the third with an RBI double in the right-centre field gap that scored Carrera, who was batting leadoff for the suspended Jose Bautista.

After facing just one over the minimum in the first three innings, Sanchez ran into trouble in the fourth, where he allowed three one-out singles to Xander Bogaerts, Shaw and Hanley Ramirez, which tied the game 2-2. The 23-year-old avoided a much bigger inning after Marco Hernandez lined into a double play with the bases loaded, thanks to a great heads-up play by Donaldson and Devon Travis.

Donaldson responded with a bases-loaded RBI single scoring Russell Martin in the fourth giving the Jays the 3-2 lead back. Edwin Encarnacion drove in Toronto's fourth run later in the inning on a sacrifice fly.

Justin Smoak stretched the lead to three runs with a mammoth home run to the second deck in right field to lead off the fifth.

Sanchez ran into trouble once again in the seventh allowing a walk to Ramirez to start the inning, followed by a Bradley single. After Hernandez moved the runners over with a groundout, Boston's Christian Vasquez delivered an RBI single up the middle, driving in Ramirez and Bradley and cutting the lead to one.

Dustin Pedroia led off the eighth with what should have been a routine fly out off Biagini, but a miscommunication by Pillar and Michael Saunders allowed the ball to drop in for a double. Pedroia later scored after Shaw hit a hard ground ball to the right side, which couldn't be retrieved by Smoak or Travis. Shaw was credited with an RBI single.

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