KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 Kazuma Okamoto had four hits and two RBIs, including a tiebreaking single in the seventh inning, as the surging Toronto Blue Jays beat the Kansas City Royals 4-3 on Saturday night to pull even with Cleveland for the final American League playoff spot.<\/p>\n
Toronto (72-71) won for the seventh time in eight games and moved over .500 for the first time since the Blue Jays were 4-3 on April 3. The defending AL champions, who were 10 games under .500 on July 28, are tied with the Guardians for the league’s third wild card.<\/p>\n
Okamoto went 4 for 5 with a double and broke a 3-all tie in the seventh with an RBI single. In the third inning, Okamoto hit an RBI double that hit third base over a diving Josh Rojas and rolled into the left-field corner.<\/p>\n
Nathan Lukes had three hits for Toronto, including an RBI single that made it 2-0 in the first. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. scored the first run of the game from first base when Alejandro Kirk reached on a two-out infield single and Rojas committed a throwing error.<\/p>\n
Blue Jays starter Max Scherzer pitched 5 2\/3 innings, giving up three runs and five hits with two strikeouts and a walk. Mason Fluharty (6-1) worked a hitless inning in relief and Louis Varland got three outs for his 33rd save.<\/p>\n
Seth Lugo allowed three runs and eight hits in five innings for Kansas City. Craig Kimbrel (1-3) took the loss.<\/p>\n
John Rave hit a solo homer for the Royals that tied it 3-all in the fourth. Jac Caglianone and Salvador Perez each had an RBI single in the first to pull Kansas City even at 2.<\/p>\n
Caglianone exited in the third with left elbow soreness.<\/p>\n
The Royals had runners at first and second with no outs down 4-3 in the eighth, but couldn\u2019t capitalize when Vinnie Pasquantino grounded into a double play and Michael Massy grounded out.<\/p>\n
Kansas City is 18-8 in its last 26 games at Kauffman Stadium.<\/p>\n
Royals RHP Randy Dobnak (2-3, 2.65 ERA) will pitch the series finale Sunday. Toronto had not announced a scheduled starter.<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 Kazuma Okamoto had four hits and two RBIs, including a tiebreaking single in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":797820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[3426,5,377,97656,2554,847,231,16152,24098,2123,3685,6438,381,97657,4,8678,9500,9501,9496,9497,83589,82856,13368,373,2002,282,70,2553,2126,93],"class_list":["post-797819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-blue-jays","tag-alejandro-kirk","tag-baseball","tag-blue-jays","tag-blue-jays-royals-score-okamoto","tag-bluejays","tag-craig-kimbrel","tag-jac-caglianone","tag-john-rave","tag-joshua-rojas","tag-kansas-city","tag-kazuma-okamoto","tag-louis-varland","tag-max-scherzer","tag-michael-massy","tag-mlb","tag-nathan-lukes","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40787-ap-kansas-sports-only","tag-product-40795-ap-missouri-sports-only","tag-randy-dobnak","tag-salvador-perez","tag-seth-lugo","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-torontobluejays","tag-vinnie-pasquantino","tag-vladimir-guerrero-jr"],"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\/797819","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=797819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}