TORONTO – Toronto’s Nathan Lukes wore the goat horns in the series opener against Kansas City after snuffing a rally with a baserunning mistake that ended the game.<\/p>\n
He made up for it on Wednesday night in a 3-0 victory over the Royals at Rogers Centre.<\/p>\n
Lukes hit a three-run homer and seven pitchers combined on a six-hit shutout as Toronto remained three games behind Cleveland in the race for the final American League wild-card spot.<\/p>\n
“I think that’s one thing that’s good with this team is we’re good about leaving things in the past,” Lukes said. “And that’s what I needed to do.”<\/p>\n
A night earlier, Lukes hit a two-run single to cut the Royals’ lead to 5-3 but was thrown out trying to stretch it into a double. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was on deck as the potential tying run but never made it to the plate.<\/p>\n
“Obviously something like that I’m going to think about,” Lukes said. “It sucked, but you learn from your mistakes. Today, just before the game, I go and give (manager John Schneider) a big old hug and say sorry, and that’s that.”<\/p>\n
After the Blue Jays escaped a bases-loaded jam in the third inning, Lukes put Toronto on the board in the fourth with his ninth homer of the year.<\/p>\n
“That’s how baseball works sometimes,” Schneider said. “He’s been clutch all year basically. But nice that he got the big hit when we needed it.”<\/p>\n
With Jesus Sanchez and Kazuma Okamoto aboard, Lukes tagged a 1-0 change-up from Randy Dobnak (2-2) over the wall in right field.<\/p>\n
“There were a few guys that came up to me and said that I was going to come up big tonight just to make up for what happened,” he said. “But I guess you can’t screw up baserunning if you just hit the ball over the fence.”<\/p>\n
Spencer Miles worked two-plus innings as Toronto’s opener and Chad Dallas (2-1) earned the win with 2 2\/3 hitless frames.<\/p>\n
Dallas, who was recalled from triple-A Buffalo on Tuesday, came on with two outs in the third inning and struck out cleanup hitter Salvador Perez with the bases loaded.<\/p>\n
“I like his demeanour and his stuff,” Schneider said. “So he knew exactly when he was coming in and he made big pitches. It’s a big strikeout there.”<\/p>\n
The Royals (59-75), who had their nine-game winning streak come to an end, put two runners on in the eighth and ninth innings but couldn’t score.<\/p>\n
Louis Varland struck out Isaac Collins to complete a four-out save. It was his 30th save of the season.<\/p>\n
Brendon Little, Mason Fluharty, Paul Sewald and Tyler Rogers also contributed to the shutout.<\/p>\n
“It’s huge what they’re doing for us,” Lukes said of Toronto’s relievers. “Everyone sees it. The team sees it. What they’re doing is a lot. They’re all throwing a lot.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully we can give them some rest here soon.”<\/p>\n
Toronto (65-69) has won 17 of its last 28 games to get back into the playoff race. The Guardians beat the Los Angeles Angels 4-3 earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
The rubber game of the three-game series is set for Thursday night. Right-hander Spencer Arrighetti (7-6, 4.73) was scheduled to start for the Blue Jays against left-hander Noah Cameron (8-8, 4.02).<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 26, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO – Toronto’s Nathan Lukes wore the goat horns in the series opener against Kansas City after snuffing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,2323,2314,2317,2313,2413,55,19,2310,2328,2304,2318,2308,2319,4,2305,2303,8678,185,282,5926,1039],"class_list":["post-789736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb-postseason","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-events","tag-baseball-finals","tag-baseball-games","tag-baseball-playoffs-and-champions","tag-champion-seasons-in-major-league-baseball","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-major-league-baseball-competitions","tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","tag-major-league-baseball-seasons","tag-major-league-baseball-teams","tag-major-league-baseball-teams-seasons","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-mlb-postseason","tag-nathan-lukes","tag-sports","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-blue-jays-minor-league-players","tag-world-series"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}