Two swings in the second decided it
Josh Smith turned on a 2-2 sweeper. Kazuma Okamoto followed with a 2-1 cutter that landed in the left-field seats. Two pitches from Jack Perkins, two runs, and the Toronto Blue Jays had a lead they never gave back in a 4-2 win over the Athletics on Tuesday night in West Sacramento.
Okamoto’s blast was his 30th home run of a first major league season that began with a move over from Japan. The 30-year-old has spent the summer resetting what Toronto thought it was getting, and there are still more than two weeks of the regular season to add to the number.
Smith, Okamoto and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. each finished with two hits.
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Soriano kept the ball on the ground
Jose Soriano gave Toronto seven innings and asked almost nothing of the bullpen. He allowed two runs on six hits, walked one and struck out three, recording 16 of his outs on grounders, one of them a double play. The win moved him to 12-7.
Rookie Spencer Miles handled the last two innings, retiring all six he faced with three strikeouts for the second save of his career. He finished Tommy White on three pitches.
The insurance came in the sixth. Nathan Lukes reached on an infield single, Guerrero drilled a single to center that ended Perkins’ night, and Alejandro Kirk lined an RBI single off Chris Roycroft. Smith then grounded into a double play that scored Guerrero from third. Perkins fell to 3-11, charged with four runs and seven hits over five-plus innings without issuing a walk.
The wild-card math has not moved much
At 73-73, the Blue Jays have won eight of their last 11 and sit one game behind the Cleveland Guardians (74-72) for the third American League wild card. A team sitting on exactly .500 in September is not supposed to be this interesting.
The Athletics had taken five of their previous six, including a walk-off against these same Blue Jays a night earlier. Carlos Cortes cleared the right-field wall on an 0-2 fastball in the fourth and Donovan Walton did the same on a first-pitch sinker in the seventh. Walton and Henry Bolte had two hits apiece for a side now 58-88.
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