TORONTO (AP) \u2014 Cedric Mullins, Victor Mesa Jr. and Nick Fortes hit solo homers, Nick Martinez pitched six innings of one-run ball and the AL East-leading Tampa Bay Rays beat the struggling Toronto Blue Jays 7-1 on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Junior Caminero had three hits and an RBI, Yandy D\u00edaz had two hits and scored twice, and Jonathan Aranda added an RBI single as the Rays snapped a five-game losing streak.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay has gone 5-1 against Toronto this season.<\/p>\n
Martinez (9-2) gave up one run and six hits, all singles, and extended his unbeaten streak to seven starts.<\/p>\n
Cam Booser worked a 1-2-3 seventh, Casey Legumina handled the eighth and Bryan Baker finished for the Rays.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays made three errors in losing for the fifth time in six games. They\u2019ve scored two runs in the past three games, all losses.<\/p>\n
Toronto was 39-39 after beating Houston on June 22. The defending AL champions have gone 7-15 since.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays dropped to 13-20 in series openers.<\/p>\n
Toronto\u2019s Dylan Cease, the AL All-Star starter last week, allowed five runs, three earned, and seven hits in six innings. Cease (6-5) walked one and struck out seven in his first defeat since June 27, against Texas.<\/p>\n
Mesa hit a one-out homer off Cease in the fourth, his eighth. Mullins added a leadoff homer in the sixth, his 12th.<\/p>\n
Fortes capped the scoring with a leadoff homer against Brendon Little in the ninth, his third.<\/p>\n
Caminero had two doubles and an RBI single among his three hits. He also reached on an intentional walk in the ninth.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Rays RHP Drew Rasmussen (7-5, 3.26 ERA) is scheduled to start Tuesday against Blue Jays RHP Kevin Gausman (4-8, 4.33).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO (AP) \u2014 Cedric Mullins, Victor Mesa Jr. and Nick Fortes hit solo homers, Nick Martinez pitched six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5105],"tags":[1251,62,5,189,40,4,6726,43,187,540,92,6727,5168,5167],"class_list":["post-627565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-lightning","tag-associated-press","tag-florida","tag-hockey","tag-lightning","tag-news","tag-nhl","tag-professional-baseball","tag-sports","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-lightning","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabaylightning"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116956291611090505","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}