Blue Jays barely keep playoff hopes alive against Baltimore last night

The Toronto Blue Jays have been a pretty exciting team all season and last night’s game against the Baltimore Orioles was just another fun-filled affair.

With their playoff hopes pretty much over with a loss this weekend, the Blue Jays need to sweep the Orioles and hopefully get a little luck from the out-of-town scoreboard if they wish to see the postseason.

While the Boston Red Sox did win yesterday, both the New York Yankees and Seattle Mariners lost their respective games. This means that the Yankees currently hold the top spot in the AL Wild Card and are one game ahead of the Red Sox (who occupy the second spot) and both the Mariners and Blue Jays sit one game back. Essentially, the Blue Jays really need those two teams to lose over the next two days if they want to play meaningful October baseball or at least find wiggle room to enter the Wild Card and push for a tiebreaker game.

With Steven Matz on the mound yesterday, the southpaw had one of his best outings of the year, pitching deep into the game and holding the Orioles off the scoreboard until the eighth inning. His final line would be 7.0 innings pitched, two earned runs, and six hits with five strikeouts and one walk.

The Toronto Blue Jays survived a late-inning scare last night against the Baltimore Orioles as the club cannot afford a loss given the Wild Card standings.

The bullpen made the game interesting at the end, with Adam Cimber only lasting 0.1 innings and giving up two earned runs while Jordan Romano had to escape a bases-loaded jam in the eighth with the Orioles only down by two runs. Romano would come back out to finish the ninth and the Blue Jays won 6-4.

The offense last night was pretty lackluster for the top five in the order, as it was the bottom three who put the club ahead. The 6-7-8-9 hitters in Corey Dickerson, Santiago Espinal, Danny Jansen, and Cavan Biggio all had multi-hit games with both Dickerson and Jansen hitting a home run each. The Blue Jays catcher led the charge with three RBI and Biggio was solid in his return to the lineup since being placed on the IL back in early August, providing two hits and one RBI in the nine-hole.

George Springer, Marcus Semien, and Bo Bichette did add a hit each, with Springer also collecting an RBI and hitting a milestone 500 RBI in his career, but the Blue Jays potent top of the order including Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Teoscar Hernandez were held to a collective 3-20 last night.

While the lineup may have been a little quiet last night from the power hitters, it was the bottom of the order who kept the team in the game. It could have gotten ugly real fast late in the game if the Orioles had capitalized in the late-inning rally and a loss would have the Blue Jays sitting two games back with only two games remaining, which is pretty much the nail in the coffin for their playoff hopes.

The Blue Jays will be sending rookie Alek Manoah to the mound today while the Orioles are putting out one of their top arms in John Means, a Rookie of the Year finalist back in 2019 who is currently pitching to a 3.32 ERA on the season with 132 strikeouts.