ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Through a season-defining stretch that featured 16 of 21 games against the Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles, and which saw them post a 10-6 record, the Toronto Blue Jays head home with a solid grip on the top wild-card spot and a playoff-berth clinch imminent.
Their magic number is down to five after a 7-1 win Sunday over the Rays secured a four-game weekend split at Tropicana Field, the soul-less circus tent where so many Blue Jays dreams have gone to die. Alejandro Kirk opened the second by rocking a 97 m.p.h. fastball from AL all-star starter Shane McClanahan over the wall in left, while George Springer took the lefty deep in the third and fifth innings, leading the way in a second straight win after three straight losses.
Teoscar Hernandez added a two-run shot in the eighth and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. an RBI single in the ninth, helping five shutout innings of hard contact but little damage from Ross Stripling and four frames of clean relief stand up before a crowd of 16,394.
At 86-67, the Blue Jays moved two games clear of the Rays (84-69) atop the wild-card race, with the Seattle Mariners (83-68), who were at Kansas City, beginning the day 1.5 games off the pace. A loss by the Baltimore Orioles (79-72), who were hosting Houston, could further cut Toronto’s magic number.
The Blue Jays were in a much more precarious spot back before this gruelling run began, heading into a Sept. 5 doubleheader at Baltimore trailing both the Mariners and Rays in the wild-card standings and just 1.5 games on the Orioles for the third wild-card.
A sweep of that twin-bill spring-boarded them into a 13-8 run that included a 5-2 mark against the Orioles and a 5-4 run against the Rays, their perennial nemesis, that helped reset the standings.
Nine games remain, beginning with the first of three against the New York Yankees on Monday night, and if not for the losses in five games last Sunday to Friday, that series would have at least placed a run at the AL East on the spectrum of possibility.
Instead, the Yankees will arrive on the verge of securing the division title, leaving the Blue Jays playing for homefield advantage in the wild-card round, where they may very well encounter the Rays once again.
Recovering to earn a split and finish 4-5 at the Trop this year — they were 5-5 versus the Rays at Rogers Centre — should help steel them for another meeting against a rival that dogged them in all 19 meetings.
McClanahan had been tough on the Blue Jays in the past, allowing only six earned runs in 26.1 innings over five previous starts, but gave up a career-high three homers in his five innings Sunday.
That support came after Stripling dodged damage in a first inning that included four balls put in play at 98.8 m.p.h. or harder. He better suppressed hard contact from there, allowing just a Taylor Walls double and Randy Arozarena sacrifice fly in the third over the next four innings.
A brilliant pick by third baseman Matt Chapman on an Isaac Paredes chopper with men on the corners to end the third helped, too.
Zach Pop, Adam Cimber, Trevor Richards and Yusei Kikuchi each threw an inning to close things out.
