homered<\/a> at Rogers Centre for the first time this season. It was part of a 4-for-5 day that included a curtain call from the sellout crowd. <\/p>\nHe entered play against Detroit with a .333 batting average and .898 OPS (on-base-plus slugging percentage) over 12 games in September. <\/p>\n
Most of Guerrero’s offensive numbers this season are below his career averages. But if the first baseman gets hot like he did last October, look out. <\/p>\n
Mushy middle <\/p>\n
The American League has never seemed weaker and that may be good news for the reigning AL champions. <\/p>\n
A .500 record might just be good enough for a division crown in the mediocre West Division as well as the middling Central race. <\/p>\n
The third wild-card spot will likely go to a team with a similar mark. <\/p>\n
Detroit squeaked in last year with a record of 87-75. <\/p>\n
The Blue Jays, who took a 75-75 record into their opener against the Tigers, were just one game behind the Cleveland Guardians in the race for the final berth. <\/p>\n
Trey day <\/p>\n
Bullpen days have been the norm in recent weeks due to injury woes to Toronto’s starting pitchers. <\/p>\n
Some much-needed relief may soon be on the way. <\/p>\n
Trey Yesavage, who has been out six weeks after undergoing knee surgery, was scheduled to make a rehab appearance for triple-A Buffalo on Tuesday. Fellow right-hander Shane Bieber (shoulder) is also making progress, but his timeline is less certain. <\/p>\n
Slugger Anthony Santander (shoulder) has been playing with the Bisons and could be a late-September addition. <\/p>\n
Tiebreakers <\/p>\n
Baseball’s old “Game 163” setup to break ties was retired a few years ago. <\/p>\n
If teams finish with the same regular-season record, Major League Baseball has a list of criteria to determine which club gets the spot. <\/p>\n
The Blue Jays hold the tiebreaker over the Guardians thanks to a better head-to-head record. <\/p>\n
However, if Cleveland wins the Central and Chicago falls into the wild-card spot, the White Sox have the tiebreaker edge on Toronto. <\/p>\n
Playing the odds <\/p>\n
The Blue Jays’ playoff odds were slim at best in late July when the team was 10 games under the .500 mark. <\/p>\n
Entering the opener against Detroit, Toronto had won 11 of 17 games to greatly improve its chances. <\/p>\n
Every opponent the Blue Jays play the rest of the way \u2014 Detroit, Texas, Baltimore and Cincinnati \u2014 currently has a sub-.500 record. <\/p>\n
At the start of the day Monday, Toronto had a 43.4-per chance of qualifying for the post-season, per FanGraphs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":896820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-896819","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\/896819","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=896819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/896820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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