Toronto Blue Jays clinch first playoff berth in 22 years

Though the Blue Jays were popping champagne corks to celebrate a playoff berth, Rays CF Kevin Kiermaier had his own success story in Saturday’s 10-8 loss, hitting a home run off buddy David Price.

“Thank God for mathematicians I guess”, Gibbons told reporters before the Tampa game. “There’s no doubt that was the turning point on paper; I’d like to think that we had a pretty good foundation that had already been laid”. “So that’s why there’s really not that much excitement, I feel like, this morning”. There’s an insane amount of hard work behind this “luck”, of course – Stroman had to accelerate his rehab and training significantly to be physically ready to return to play this year, and had to make that decision early in the process – but not only being capable but effective in his return, rather than suffering a setback of any kind, involves a certain amount of luck of its own.

“They should”, said Dickey. “There were a lot of pitches I thought would get swings and they were laying off both high and low”. They weren’t swinging at anything other than a strike.

In the first inning, the Rays stepped up to the machine and received one of those small payouts that keeps you mentally sustained just enough to keep pulling the lever.

Toronto came into Friday night’s game needing a win over Tampa combined with losses by the Twins and Angels to secure a wild-card berth.

Twins 6, Tigers 2 – Eduardo Escobar homered and drove in three runs as visiting Minnesota kept pace in the AL wild-card race with a victory over Detroit. We expect to have another one of these when we win the division.

But if Toronto is victorious on Friday – regardless of how it fares against the Yankees for the rest of the season – this gives the team its first post-season appearance since 1993, when the Blue Jays won the second of its back-to-back World Series titles.

Toronto extended its AL East to four games after the White Sox beat the Yankees.

Across Toronto and across Canada on Saturday, the team’s elated supporters were coming down with a bad case of playoff fever. The Rays are 57-44 when they hit at least one homer. The knuckleballer retired 18 of the final 19 batters he faced, including the last 11 straight. “After the first inning, there weren’t too many hard-hit balls off him”.

“It’s been a tough year, losing my dad”, said an emotional Dickey, whose father died in June. It was the fifth multihomer game of the season for Bautista, whose homers were his 38th and 39th.

Blue Jays playoff tickets became available to the public on Thursday, but sold out within 100 minutes of hitting the open market. He joins Carlos Delgado (2000) and Shawn Green (1999) as the only Toronto players to hit 40 home runs and 40 doubles in the same season.

“Everybody’s gratified, it’s been so long and the guys have played great and they’ve just really turned it on the last two months”, said manager John Gibbons.

Pillar put the Blue Jays on top when he connected off Odorizzi to begin the fourth.

Kevin Pillar and Ben Revere each had three hits as the Blue Jays won for the sixth time in their past eight meetings with the Rays.

Bautista made it 10-5 with a solo shot off Kirby Yates in the eighth. Price survived a four-run third inning that briefly made it a game. He injured the knee August 18….

Rays: Longoria started at DH, with Richie Shaffer at 3B….

“I didn’t have my normal fastball command, my slider wasn’t as crisp as it has been in the past”, Archer said. The Blue Jays have recorded an overall money line of +930 and have shown high-level performance as a favorite this season with a record of 68-36.