Mike Wilner: Blue Jays’ AL wild-card schedules and tiebreakers: Rangers lose ground on Toronto’s off-day - Toronto Star

Over the last two days in this turtle race, the top five teams for the last berth including Toronto went a combined 1-5. 

Seattle Mariners’ Julio Rodríguez hit the winning three-run homer against the Texas Rangers during the seventh inning Thursday.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star and host of the baseball podcast “Deep Left Field.” Follow him on Bluesky: @wilnerness

It’s exceedingly fitting, in this “race” for the final wild-card spot in the American League, that on a day when only one of the five main contenders was in action, that one team stubbed its toe.

With a chance to catch the Blue Jays and move within one game of the Cleveland Guardians, the Texas Rangers blew a late lead and lost the rubber match of their series in Seattle.

That means that over the last two days, the top five teams went a combined 1-5. It’s not that nobody wants to win that last wild-card spot. All of them do, absolutely. But all the teams in the chase are extremely flawed. Only one team among the contenders has a winning record going into Friday.

Synopsis: After dropping two of three in Baltimore, the Guardians move on to Minnesota, where they could pretty much knock the Twins right out of the race with a good showing.

In the opener, Cleveland will send rookie-of-the-year candidate Parker Messick (11-6) to the mound. The left-hander gave up three runs over seven innings in a 6-0 loss to the Detroit Tigers in his last start. It was the first time since June 29 that he’d allowed more than two runs in an outing. Messick had a 1.80 ERA over July and August.

Synopsis: The Jays can’t knock out the Orioles this weekend, since they head to Baltimore on their next road trip, but a sweep would not only do a lot of damage to the O’s hopes (and raise the Jays’ hopes a ton), it would also secure the season series for Toronto.

Old pals Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt face off in the opener.

Bassitt hoped to return after helping Toronto reach the World Series, but wound up with the Orioles, in town Friday.