Kazuma Okamoto led a three-home-run attack, Shane Bieber topped the Tampa Bay Rays for the second time this season, and the visiting Toronto Blue Jays claimed a series win in the first half of their six-game road trip with a 5-1 victory on Thursday afternoon in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Okamoto went 2-for-5 with a double and his second homer of the series. Daz Cameron and Nathan Lukes added solo shots for the Blue Jays.
George Springer was 2-for-5 with two RBIs as Toronto improved to 9-4 in its past 13 contests.
Bieber (5-2) went seven innings and allowed a run on four hits. The 2020 American Cy Young award winner struck out seven.
Two-time Gold Glove shortstop Andres Gimenez went 1-for-2 but had to leave the game in the fourth inning after reaching for his right hamstring during a hard sprint to first base on a groundout. The Blue Jays announced later that Jimenez had hamstring tightness.
Yandy Diaz was 2-for-4 and Chandler Simpson singled to extend their hitting streaks to 11 games apiece, but the American League’s top club managed just five hits and finished their seven-game homestand with a 2-5 record.
Rays starter Ian Seymour (9-4) allowed all three homers over five innings. He fanned eight and walked one.
In the regular-season finale between the division foes, Okamoto set the tone in the second inning.
The first baseman, who launched rocket estimated at 442 feet in Tuesday’s series-opening 10-5 Jays win, went deep again in Game 3, launching a Seymour slider 415 feet to left field for his 26th homer of the season.
Bieber, who also threw seven innings of one-run ball in a 3-1 win over the Rays on July 23 in Toronto, backed up the early support with three perfect innings, but Simpson broke that up with an infield single leading off the fourth, and he advanced to second on a throwing error by Charles McAdoo on the play. Junior Caminero then singled him in to tie the game.
Lukes led off the fifth by drilling a Seymour changeup into the right-field seats for his seventh homer, giving the Jays the advantage back. Cameron continued the long-ball barrage by belting his first homer later in the frame for a 3-1 lead.
Springer drove in two runs in the seventh with a single for a 5-1 cushion.
Lukes made a fine leaping grab against the right-field wall on Cedric Mullins’ drive in the bottom half with one runner on to thwart a Rays rally.
–Field Level Media
