Toronto’s starting pitcher Shane Bieber pitches on Friday to the Tampa Bay Rays.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
The Blue Jays maintained a grip on first place on Friday night with a 4-2 victory over the visiting Tampa Bay Rays.
Toronto has been on top of the American League East Division since July 3 and remains (marginally) ahead of the second-place Yankees.
New York beat the Baltimore Orioles, 8-4, and has an identical 92-68 record. When the season ends on Sunday, Toronto would win in case of a tie because it won more games between the teams this season.
Toronto can win its first division championship since 2015 – and a first-round bye in next week’s playoffs – with triumphs on Saturday and Sunday or with a win in conjunction with a Yankees loss.
Nathan Lukes hit a 399-foot, two-run home run in the fifth inning to break a 2-2 tie and push the Blue Jays ahead. It was his 12th homer of the season.
It came on a hit and run with George Springer breaking for second base.
“That wasn’t what I intended to hit there, but I’ll take it,” Lukes said. Earlier, he had a run-scoring single.
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The home run made a winner of starting pitcher Shane Bieber (4-2), who went five innings, allowed two runs, five hits, walked two batters and struck out three. A sell-out crowd of 42,181 erupted.
“They were probably the loudest they have ever been,” Lukes said.
Mason Fluharty came on in relief and pitched two hitless innings with four strikeouts. Tommy Nance and Brendon Little retired the Rays in a nervous eighth.
Jeff Hoffman worked an even more nervous ninth and earned his 33rd save.
Adrian Houser (8-5) took the loss for Tampa Bay. He allowed four hits and seven runs in six innings.
Springer got Toronto off to a fast start with a double to left-centre on Houser’s second pitch of the night. Lukes followed with a single to left that plated Springer with the game’s first run.
Tampa Bay responded immediately with back-to-back home runs off fastballs in the top of the second inning. The first was by 22-year-old slugger Junior Caminero, 387 feet to right field. It was Caminero’s 45th of the season.
Blue Jay George Springer heads to first base on a his single against the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
Jonathan Aranda then hit another out of the park to right to put the Rays ahead, 2-1.
The Blue Jays tied it at 2-2 in the bottom half of the inning. With one out, Daulton Varsho, whose grand slam on Thursday helped propel Toronto to a 6-1 triumph over the Boston Red Sox, lined a one-out double into right-centre. He came around to score with two outs when Ernie Clement slapped a soft single to shallow right field.
Bieber worked out of trouble in the fourth and fifth innings, each time stranding two Tampa Bay runners. Carson Williams got caught looking at strike three in the fourth, while Caminero flew out to medium left field an inning later.
“I felt like I finished strong,” Bieber said.
He joined Toronto a little less than two months ago after sitting out nearly 16 months after undergoing elbow re-construction surgery.
Now he finds himself in the heat of a division race.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “It’s exactly what you want, the pressure, the anxiety. It’s what you play for.”
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Before the game, Blue Jays manager John Schneider said that Bo Bichette, who has missed 17 games with a sprained knee, has begun hitting, throwing and taking on more work each day.
Bichette was hurt when he collided with Yankees catcher Austin Wells in a 3-1 loss in New York on Sept 6. As of Friday, the Blue Jays shortstop still led the major leagues with 181 hits to go along with a .311 batting average, 18 home runs and 94 runs batted in.
The Blue Jays have won five division titles, the last in 2015. They earned wildcard berths four times since then without much success, and have been swept in each of the last three.
“It would be nice to pencil [Bichette] into the lineup,” Schneider said before the game. “We’ll see how he does this weekend. Having him in the lineup in the playoffs would be a huge plus.”
The Blue Jays may not know until Sunday if they are the division champion and get a few days off, or begin a wildcard series at Rogers Centre on Tuesday.
“Our goal is to win the division and go into the division series,” Schneider said. “If you don’t, you have to pivot.
“It’s weird when you are in a place where in 48 hours the situation can turn on its head. We are working on the assumption that the Yankees are going to win all three.”
That means Toronto pretty much needs to do the same.