Blue Jays rookie Kazuma Okamoto hits 30th homer, joins rare company in crucial win

These are the kinds of performances the Toronto Blue Jays need down the stretch. Kazuma Okamoto and Josh Smith both went 2-for-4 with a home run. José Soriano came up huge on the mound and pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on six hits and three strikeouts. And the Blue Jays picked up a much needed 4-2 win over the Athletics, locked down by Spencer Miles who earned his second career save.

Only Soriano and Miles were used by manager John Schneider which saves a bullpen that was desperate for a night with a light workload as they have been asked to cover a lot of innings lately and there will likely be another bullpen game coming up this week as Toronto's rotation continues to be in shambles behind Dylan Cease, Soriano and Max Scherzer. Spencer Arrighetti is still slotted as a starter but the results have not been great.

The win puts Toronto at 73-73 on the year, but the Cleveland Guardians also won, meaning the Blue Jays remain a game behind them in the Wild Card standings with 16 games to play down the stretch.

While winning the game would certainly be enough for Okamoto, he also made some personal history in this one. His second inning solo home run was the 30th of the season, which put him into some elite company.

First of all, no Blue Jays' rookie has ever hit 30 in a single season. He alread owned the team's record for rookie home runs when he broke Eric Hinske's previous team mark of 24, hitting his 25th home run on Aug. 18 at Tropicana Field.

It also throws him into the 30+ home run club by a Japanese born player in MLB history. Okamoto joins Munetaka Murakami, Shohei Ohtani, who has done that six times, Seiya Suzuki who hit 32 home runs last season and Hideki Matsui, the Yankees legend who started the whole club.

But unlike Okamoto, Matsui didn't reach the 30 home run mark until his second year in the big leagues - also at the age of 30, after hitting 16 in his first year in the Bronx in 2003.

Okamoto is also the third rookie this season to reach 30 home runs joining, once again, his fellow country man in Murakami who has done that with the AL Central leading Chicago White Sox and Sal Stewart who has 31 home runs and has been worth 2.1 bWAR over 145 games for the Reds this year.

Blue Jays' Okamoto focused on the wins, not the personal accolades

Speaking through interpreter Yusuke Oshima, Okamoto told reporters after the game, “Definitely, it’s great to get to 30 in my first year, but we’ve still got a few games to go here. I want to flip the switch and focus on the games moving forward.”

Okamoto has found another gear lately. In September, batting .333 (9-for-27) with a 1.009 OPS in seven games during the month and has hit home runs on back-to-back nights. Going a little further back, it seems like Okamoto really dug in during the series against the Yankees at Rogers Centre that started on Aug. 14.

Since then he has hit .263/.337/.553 with a 145 wRC+ and five home runs. That is the third best wRC+ on the team over that stretch while his 10.5% walk rate leads the team.

The Blue Jays, who hold the tiebreaker over the Guardians, just need to match them record wise to get into the playoffs, and they'll hope to gain some ground on Wednesday (Aug. 9) when they play the Athletics in the finale of their three game set with a 3:05 pm (EST) first pitch, while the Guardians finish their series on the road in Baltimore.

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