Jays to celebrate ‘weird’ wild-card berth on Friday
TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays punched their postseason ticket without taking the field, so the celebration will wait until Friday night.
The Blue Jays locked up an American League wild-card spot a night earlier when Baltimore lost 5-3 at Boston.
“It was easy,” interim manager John Schneider said jokingly Friday before Toronto hosted Boston. “It was a little weird. You become a Boston Red Sox fan for about three hours and then you turn it off. Definitely different, but no matter how you do it, doing it is the most important part.”
Schneider said the Blue Jays plan to celebrate in the clubhouse together following the game against the Red Sox.
“We expect more, but we definitely need to enjoy this,” Blue Jays shortstop Bo Bichette said.
Schneider started out watching Thursday’s Orioles game on TV but, getting antsy in the late innings, decided to step out for a walk. That’s what he was doing when his wife and two sons called from the family home in Florida, with wife Jess providing play-by-play of the final outs over FaceTime.
“She was pretty much spot on,” Schneider said. “She even knew that Cedric Mullins had a hit through the shift.”
Outfielder George Springer spent most of Thursday afternoon playing with his young son but tuned in to watch the end of the Orioles game.
“Weird, but awesome,” he said of the experience. “It just allows you to breathe a little bit. Obviously, you might want to do it a bit of a different way but, at the end of the day, who cares? It’s awesome to say that we’re going to the playoffs no matter what.”
Springer had previous experience clinching away from the ballpark. In 2018, Springer and the Houston Astros wrapped up the AL West when, hours after beating the Blue Jays in Toronto, Oakland lost to Seattle.
“It was like 3 in the morning,” Springer said. “The whole team was sleeping.”
The Blue Jays last reached the playoffs in the 60-game pandemic season of 2020, but there were no fans in the stands when they beat the New York Yankees in Buffalo, New York, home of Toronto’s Triple-A team.
Toronto split its 2021 season between three sites: its spring training stadium in Dunedin, Florida, Buffalo, and Toronto.
A crowd of approximately 45,000 people was expected at Rogers Centre on Friday.
“It’s definitely different doing it in front of the fans and having had the fans through an entire season with us here at the park,” Bichette said. “Definitely excited to enjoy it with them and hopefully finish strong so we have an opportunity to play in front of them.”
Toronto (87-69) has six games remaining, three against the Red Sox and three in Baltimore. The Blue Jays lead the wild-card race ahead of Seattle (85-70) and Tampa Bay (85-71). The team that finishes atop the standings will host all three games of the wild-card playoff round.
“We have everything right in front of us, so the work does not stop,” Schneider said.
Last season, the Blue Jays went 91-71 but finished one game out of a playoff spot, making this year’s clinch all the more satisfying.
“It shows you that all the hard work, all the extra attention to the small things, it worked,” Springer said. “Obviously, there’s still a job to be done, but that’s something to hold our heads up high and say we accomplished our goal, which was to make the postseason.”
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Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — The Yankees are acquiring third baseman Ryan McMahon from the Rockies in exchange for minor league pitchers Griffin Herring and Josh Grosz, sources confirmed to ESPN on Friday.
The Yankees will assume the remainder of 30-year-old McMahon’s contract, which includes approximately $4.5 million for the remainder of 2025 and $32 million over the next two seasons.
An All-Star last season, McMahon was batting .217 with 16 home runs and a .717 OPS in 100 games for Colorado in 2025. He hit home runs in the first two games after the All-Star break and another on Tuesday and is on pace to keep his four-year 20-homer streak alive.
While the production has resulted in a 92 OPS+, which suggests McMahon has been 8% worse than the average major league hitter this season, he still represents a significant offensive upgrade at third base for New York.
The Yankees have had Oswald Peraza, one of the worst hitters in the majors, manning third base nearly every day since the club decided to release DJ LeMahieu, another former Rockies player, earlier this month and move Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base. Peraza, while a strong defender, is slashing .147/.208/.237 in 69 games this season. His 24 wRC+ ranks last among the 310 hitters with at least 160 plate appearances this season.
Defensively, McMahon is a Gold Glove-caliber third baseman whose four Outs Above Average is third in the majors this season. He joins a Yankees club that has been marred by sloppy defense, most recently on Wednesday when it committed four errors in a defensive meltdown against the first-place Toronto Blue Jays.
Herring, 22, has recorded a 1.71 ERA in 89⅓ innings across 16 starts between Low- and High-A this season. He was a sixth-round pick out of LSU in the 2024 draft.
Grosz, an 11th-round pick in 2023, had a 4.14 ERA in 87 innings over 16 games (15 starts) for High-A Hudson Valley this season.
With third base addressed, the Yankees will continue to seek to acquire pitchers to bolster both their rotation and bullpen.
MLB.com first reported on the Yankees trading for McMahon.
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Jorge Castillo
The Mets acquired left-handed reliever Gregory Soto from the Orioles on Friday in exchange for two minor leaguers in what could be the first of multiple moves by New York to bolster its bullpen before the trade deadline Thursday.
The trade, which sent Class A right-hander Wellington Aracena and Double-A right-hander Cameron Foster to Baltimore, gives the Mets a hard-throwing left-hander to complement the club’s only lefty on the roster, Brooks Raley, who returned from Tommy John surgery last week.
Soto, who is 30 and was an All-Star with the Detroit Tigers in 2021 and 2022, has posted a 3.96 ERA with a 27.5% strikeout rate in 45 appearances this season. The Mets will be his fourth team since the 2022 season.
On Monday, Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns plainly signaled that upgrading the bullpen for the stretch run is his top priority.
The need is clear. Injuries and overuse have depleted a relief corps that led the majors in bullpen ERA through May 31. Since June 1, the group has posted 4.52 ERA, good for 23rd in the majors.
Aracena, 20, is 1-1 with a 2.38 ERA in 17 games for St. Lucie. The Orioles said he is one of two pitchers in the minors this season to have thrown at least 60 innings without surrendering a home run.
Foster, 26, is 5-2 with two saves and a 2.97 ERA while pitching at the Double-A and Triple-A levels.
BOSTON — Hundreds of Aramark workers at Fenway Park are on strike and planning to stay out for all of a homestand between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers starting Friday night.
Concession workers had set a deadline of noon Friday for Aramark and Fenway Park to reach an agreement with the Local 26 chapter of the Massachusetts and Rhode Island hotel, casino, airport and food services workers union.
The union went on strike at noon asking for “living wages, guardrails on technology and R-E-S-P-E-C-T!”
With the Red Sox and Dodgers scheduled to start at 7:10 p.m. EDT, union officials had a request for fans attending this homestand with food and beer workers on strike.
“We’re asking you to NOT buy concessions inside the ballpark,” Local 26 wrote on social media. “Tailgate before the games!”
Union workers walked the picket line wearing green T-shirts declaring “FENWAY WORKERS ON STRIKE.” They carried signs in the shape of a baseball proclaiming Local 26.
The Red Sox go out of town Monday with a game that night at Minnesota.
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