TORONTO \u2014 Daulton Varsho was just trying to make contact \u2014 \u201cshort and sweet to the ball\u201d he later said \u2014 but he ended up having the biggest hit of the Toronto Blue Jays\u2019 season.<\/p>\n
Varsho launched a grand slam in the sixth inning to lift the Blue Jays over the Boston Red Sox 6-1 on Thursday night as Toronto moved one step closer to winning the American League East title. <\/p>\n
Although the New York Yankees also won Thursday, beating the Chicago White Sox 5-3 to stay tied with Toronto atop the division, the Blue Jays reduced their magic number to three.<\/p>\n
Any combination of Toronto wins and New York losses that add up to three will give the Blue Jays the East title. Whichever team wins the division gets a bye to the AL Division Series and home-field advantage to boot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everybody wants to feel this pressure at the end of the season,\u201d said Varsho. \u201cYou want to feel that because that means you\u2019re in it. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of those things where you either can crumble and fall and not play well or we can be us and know that throughout the season, we\u2019ve played really good baseball, and just keep trusting it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a hard nine days for the Blue Jays as they have lost six of eight games with a day off mixed in. Toronto\u2019s previous win, an 8-5 triumph in Kansas City on Sunday, clinched a playoff berth but all those losses evaporated a five-game lead in the AL East.<\/p>\n
Varsho said he and Blue Jays hitting coach David Popkins were talking about the season spinning out of control earlier Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people didn\u2019t pick us to win the division, and we exceeded everybody\u2019s standards, and now it\u2019s like everybody\u2019s holding us to that standard. Now we\u2019ve got to win a division,\u201d said Varsho. \u201cIt\u2019s like, well, screw it. We already have house money. Let\u2019s just keep going, keep playing the way that we\u2019ve always played. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t win the division, who cares? We\u2019re a really tough team to beat, and we\u2019ve got the pieces to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
George Springer had a two-run homer in the same inning as Toronto (91-68) got a clutch performance from its bullpen. <\/p>\n
Louis Varland, normally a reliever, started the game and pitched two scoreless innings. He was followed to the mound by Eric Lauer, Yariel Rodriguez, Braydon Fisher, Seranthony Dominguez, Brendon Little and Jeff Hoffman.<\/p>\n
Varland, Lauer and Rodriguez combined for six perfect innings on a designated bullpen day. The three relievers\u2019 solid outing came hours after right-hander Jose Berrios, a starter who was recently moved to the bullpen, was put on the 15-day injured list with right elbow inflammation. <\/p>\n
Fellow starter Chris Bassitt got a cortisone shot in his back on Wednesday to deal with his inflammation and will return to throwing on Friday. He was placed on the IL on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always tough in a bullpen game where it\u2019s like, \u2018All right, you\u2019re counting on a lot of guys (having) a lot of good innings,\u2019\u201d said Lauer, whose 3 1\/3 innings of work were the most of any Blue Jays pitcher. \u201cThe fact that we were able to all go out there and do our jobs is huge. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it just set us up and put us in a good position to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shane Bieber (3-2) takes the mound for Toronto on Friday as the Blue Jays open their final three-game series of the regular season. Adrian Houser (8-4) gets the start for the Tampa Bay Rays (77-82).<\/p>\n
New York will host the Baltimore Orioles (75-84) in the opener of their three-game series. <\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2025.<\/p>\n
John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 Daulton Varsho was just trying to make contact \u2014 \u201cshort and sweet to the ball\u201d he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-169773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}