Guerrero, Cease step up as Blue Jays secure timely series win over Orioles

TORONTO — Dylan Cease, velocity down again even after an extra day of rest, found a way. After 74 home games without a Rogers Centre home run, so too did Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Each facing differing concerns, the two most dynamic forces on the Toronto Blue Jays stepped up Sunday in an 8-1 victory over the Baltimore Orioles, securing a timely series win that also ensured they would, at minimum, keep pace with the Cleveland Guardians for the American League’s third wild-card spot.

Cease, coming in after his fastball averaged a season-low 94.9 m.p.h. in Sacramento last week, sat 94.8 m.p.h. this time but escaped a bases-loaded, none-out jam in the first and proceeded to grind his way through five innings of one-run ball, holding the line on an Orioles rally in the top of the fifth that tied the game 1-1.

The Blue Jays responded immediately in the bottom half as George Springer sent a Trevor Rogers changeup out to right-centre for his 15 th of the season before Guerrero, who’d narrowly missed a homer on a third-inning double off the wall, hooked a sweeper 350 feet that landed in his team’s left-field bullpen, triggering bedlam among the crowd of 41,805.

Guerrero tossed his bat, took 34.14 seconds to round the bases, got mobbed by his teammates in the dugout and then came out for a curtain call after fans chanted his name.

The celebrations had barely ended when Kazuma Okamoto sent a Rogers fastball into the second deck in left field, giving the Blue Jays back-to-back-to-back home runs for just the seventh time in franchise history, and first since June 19, 2012 at Milwaukee, when Colby Rasmus, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion connected.

The bullpen locked down that lead until a four-spot in the eighth keyed by Springer’s three-run double blew things open for the Blue Jays (75-75), who began the day a game back of the Guardians, who were playing at Minnesota. Jose Soriano takes the ball Monday when the Detroit Tigers start Troy Melton in the opener of a three-game series ahead of another TBA outing, and how manager John Schneider sets his rotation from there is a matter of intrigue.

If the Blue Jays stay on turn, Cease starts again Sept. 19 at Texas and Sept. 25 versus Cincinnati, each on an extra day of rest. But if they shift to a normal four days of rest, Cease could start Sept. 18 at Texas and Sept. 23 at Baltimore, which would have him ready to pitch the Sept. 29 opener of a wild-card series, should they make it, on an extra day of rest.

The latter scenario is clearly more ideal, but only if Cease is physically up for it.

“Gauging it start-to-start, really, with the off-days that are in the schedule,” is how Schneider put it beforehand. “Trying to find the right spot for it and just seeing how his outings go, what the pitch count's like, workload's like and how he responds from it.”

Against the Orioles, Cease was down in the 92-93 m.p.h. range out of the gate, quickly found himself with the bases loaded and none out and seemed to have walked in the game’s first run on a full-count fastball to Coby Mayo.