TORONTO (AP) \u2014 Alejandro Kirk hit two home runs, including his first career grand slam, and the Toronto Blue Jays clinched their first AL East title in a decade by routing the Tampa Bay Rays 13-4 in their regular-season finale Sunday.<\/p>\n
George Springer and Addison Barger also went deep for the Blue Jays, who needed a win or a New York Yankees loss on the final day to take the division crown for the seventh time in team history and first since 2015. Toronto (94-68) also wrapped up the best record in the American League and will have home-field advantage throughout the AL playoffs.<\/p>\n
Kirk made sure of it with a first-inning slam and a two-run homer in the fifth as the Blue Jays capped their 11th series sweep of the year and extended their winning streak to four games.<\/p>\n
The homers gave Kirk 15 this season, a career high. It was his second mulithomer game of the season and the sixth of his career.<\/p>\n
Kirk finished 3 for 5 with six RBIs. He also homered in Saturday\u2019s 5-1 win.<\/p>\n
Springer went 3 for 4 with a walk. He drove in two runs and scored twice.<\/p>\n
Mason Fluharty (5-2) pitched 1 1\/3 scoreless innings of relief, striking out Jonathan Aranda to leave the bases loaded in the fourth.<\/p>\n
Aranda had three RBIs and Richie Palacios added three hits for the Rays, who finished 77-85.<\/p>\n
Aranda had two hits against Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman, who allowed four runs and eight hits in 3 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay lefty Ian Seymour (4-3) permitted six runs and seven hits in 3 1\/3 innings.<\/p>\n
Right-hander Edwin Uceta gave up Kirk\u2019s second homer.<\/p>\n
Barger made it 10-4 with a two-run homer off Kevin Kelly in the seventh, his 21st. Myles Straw chased Kelly with an RBI triple, and Springer greeted Bryan Baker with his 32nd home run.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay\u2019s Yandy D\u00edaz didn\u2019t play Sunday after raising his batting average to .300 by going 1 for 2 on Saturday. D\u00edaz played a career-high 150 games this season.<\/p>\n
Rays regulars Brandon Lowe and Chandler Simpson were also held out of the starting lineup.<\/p>\n
Key moment<\/p>\n
Kirk\u2019s grand slam came on a 83 mph changeup from Ian Seymour.<\/p>\n
Key stat<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays drew 2,848,935 fans this season, up from 2,681,236 in 2024.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Toronto will host Game 1 of a best-of-five Division Series on Saturday against the winner of the Wild Card Series between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/p>\n
Ian Harrison, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO (AP) \u2014 Alejandro Kirk hit two home runs, including his first career grand slam, and the Toronto…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,82,89837,75156],"class_list":["post-176334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tampa-bay-rays-sports-baseball-team-team-statscom-254","tag-toronto-blue-jays-sports-baseball-team-team-statscom-238"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176334","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=176334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}