For six innings on Wednesday night, Mark Buehrle and Cliff Lee went toe-to-toe, masterfully carving up each other’s lineups in a game that was shaping up to be a classic pitching duel.

Goes to show you how much can change in an inning.

By the time the seventh was over, the Jays had sent a dozen players to the plate, hit three home runs, loudly driven Lee from the game and pummelled the Phillies into submission.

Toronto won its fourth straight on Wednesday, soundly beating Philadelphia 10-0 after exploding for nine runs in the seventh. Erik Kratz, Juan Francisco and Edwin Encarnacion all homered in the inning.

Meanwhile, Buehrle continued his strong start to the season, throwing seven shutout innings to earn his major-league-leading sixth win while lowering his ERA to 1.91.

“All he does is keep winning,” manager John Gibbons said afterward.

With the win, the Jays climb back to .500 for the first time in two weeks, treading water with the rest of their divisional rivals as the schedule nears the quarter-mark.

Buehrle said he has never had a start to a season as good as this one and couldn’t even think of a seven-game stretch at any point in his 15-year career when he has pitched this well.

“I don’t want to ask too many questions,” he said. “I don’t want to try to figure out what’s going on. I just want to kind of roll with it and keep it going as long as I can, because if I go out there the next seven starts and crap the bed, these first seven starts ain’t going to matter.”

Gibbons, too, has grown tired of trying to explain the savvy southpaw’s hot start.

“All I know is he does everything right. He’s a throwback guy. He’s a workman: he goes out there, never any excuses, just lays it out there and pitches to win. Guys see that, they feed off that. There’s a lot of prima donnas in this business but he’s not one of them.”

Among the major contributors on Wednesday were three players who have been called up from the minors as injury replacements: Kratz, Francisco and Steve Tolleson, who went 3-for-4 on the night. The Jays will have to decide over the next few days what will become of them.

Adam Lind, who has been out since April 19 with a back injury, is expected to return on Thursday, while closer Casey Janssen — who hasn’t pitched yet this season — may rejoin the club on the weekend.

Francisco, who was called up to replace Lind, isn’t going anywhere. He’s hitting .276 with four homers and 11 RBIs over his 16 games. Meanwhile, despite saying before the game that “a catcher” would likely be dropped when Lind returns, Gibbons said after Wednesday’s game that the club is going to find a way to keep Kratz, the team’s third-string backstop who was called up last week before interleague play began.

“Kratz is a big-league player,” Gibbons said. “He’s proven that.”

Serving as the designated hitter on Wednesday and going up against his former team, the 31-year-old went 2-for-4 while slamming the rally-keying homer in the seventh.

“It sounds generic, but a team is as good as the 25th guy,” Kratz said after the game. “Tonight I was able to step in and I got an opportunity to hit fifth and DH and help start a rally. I’m going to do what I got to do, and that’s try to stay within my game, do what I do, and help the team when I get in there. If that’s good enough, then great. Every game in the big leagues is a tryout, it doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a 10-year deal or, you know, the next one sent down. You’re always trying to have success for the team, or what’s the point of being here?”

Starting catcher Dioner Navarro, who was back behind the plate for the first time in a week due to a tight quadriceps muscle, is not running like a healthy man, but he continues to hit well and Gibbons said he isn’t heading to the disabled list. Gibbons suggested that even with Lind back, Navarro could serve as the DH against lefties, with Kratz behind the plate.

So if Lind does in fact return on Thursday it seems the Jays will drop one of their eight relievers, likely Chad Jenkins. Then, if Janssen returns on the weekend, hotshot prospect Marcus Stroman could be the next to punch his ticket to Buffalo, where he can resume pitching as a starter.

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That would give Gibbons a more conventional seven-man bullpen and four-man bench.

“That’s the way our team’s strongest,” he said.

Brett Lawrie, meanwhile, continues to sit with hamstring tightness, but Gibbons said he would likely be good to go on Thursday or Friday.

Jose Bautista, who singled in the seventh and scored on Encarnacion’s blast, extended his season-long on-base streak to 34 games, tying Paul Molitor for the fifth-longest on-base streak in franchise history. Carlos Delgado set the record in 1998 with 38 games.

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