“Our pitching and our defense kept us in every game and we were just able to get timely hits,” said Matt Chapman, who opened the scoring with a sacrifice fly in the first and walked in the fifth to help set up Raimel Tapia . three-run double in Saturday’s 6-3 win over the Baltimore Orioles. “That’s the kind of baseball you’re going to have to play if you want to win in the playoffs, because everybody’s not going to go out there and just swing the bat. In the playoffs, pitching and defense take you very far. That’s the kind of baseball we have to play if we want to go very far.” At 13-4 so far this month after Aug. 13-14, the top-seeded Blue Jays (83-63) are starting to look like a team with the potential to do just that. Now seven games back of the fourth-place Orioles (75-69), they’re almost sufficiently locked into a postseason berth to turn their focus to jockeying for a wild-card berth with the Seattle Mariners (80-63) and Tampa Bay Rays (80-64), who played later Saturday. Their latest win, before a raucous crowd of 44,448 at Rogers Center, was the product of the formula Chapman described, as Jose Berrios got through six action-packed innings thanks in large part to the safety net of several terrific defensive plays. “We’ve played so well as a team,” Berrios said. “Everyone together in this group has done what they need to do and that’s why we’ve had a lot of wins so far this month.” The first gem came just six pitches into the game when Cedric Mullins drove a fly ball to the wall in left where Tapia jumped to grab it. In the second, Bo Bichette collected a pop up from Rougned Odor despite tripping at second base and falling to Terrin Vavra, stranding runners at second and third. Santiago Espinal collected an Odor grounder to right field to end the third. George Springer reached on a diving catch by Ramon Urias in the fourth, and that inning ended when the Blue Jays alerted a late double steal and Bichette came home after Mullins went too far at third, eventually leading to a tag Chapman. “I just read it,” Bichette said of a play the Blue Jays were burned on during a 7-5 Aug. 31 loss to the Chicago Cubs. “He started to crawl, so I wasn’t going to let him get an easy run like that.” That helped Berrios, in the words of interim manager John Snyder, “fight his ass” during a “bold” outing after Friday’s game, as he worked around seven strikeouts and two walks with just three strikeouts in six frames of it. Defensive plays were largely the margin between a quality start and an early exit. “If you do that, it keeps the pitch count in order, it keeps the confidence high, it keeps the lineups where they need to be,” Schneider said. “You win baseball.” The first came just six pitches into the game when Cedric Mullins drove a sinker to the wall in left, where Tapia jumped to grab it. In the second, Bo Bichette collected a pop up from Rougned Odor despite tripping at second base and falling to Terrin Vavra, stranding runners at second and third, Santiago Espinal collected an Odor grounder to right field to end the in the third, George Springer made a diving catch on a Ramon Urias bunt in the fourth, and that inning ended when the Blue Jays alerted a late double steal and Bichette came home when Mullins grounded out to third, driving eventually on a Chapman label. With Berrios forced to work around the contact as he allowed seven hits and two walks with just three strikeouts in his six frames, that was the margin between a quality start and an early exit. Of course, the timely strike brought it all together. Chapman’s sacrifice fly in the first followed leadoff singles by Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and a fielder’s choice by Bichette that put a man on third with less than two outs, while Springer’s two-out double in the second made it Game 3 -0. . Gunnar Henderson’s two-run single in the third quickly cut the margin, but Berrios was able to hold on to the lead, and in the fifth, Guerrero reached on an error, Chapman and Teoscar Hernandez both walked and Tapia, seemingly up the middle of the big points and again for the last years Blue Jays, I put them all with a triple. “I always play like there’s pressure on the opponent,” Tapia said through interpreter Hector Lebron. “For example, if I hit with the bases loaded, the pressure is on the pitcher. If I play defense and make a great play, then the pressure is on the player. That’s the way I’ve always thought, and that’s how I’ve succeeded.” Snyder noted before the game how Tapia so often did things, big and small, that contributed to the outcome, saying, “It’s crazy.” Interim manager John Schneider noted beforehand how Tapia so often did things, big and small, that contributed to the outcome, saying, “It’s crazy.” “He has a very unique skill set,” he continued. “We joke that the holes find him, he doesn’t find the holes. It just ends up being at the base. He walked a few times more than usual lately. It’s just a different skill set component than what we typically present every day in terms of arm and contact ability and all those kinds of things. It’s right in the middle.” Tapia’s walk in the fifth inning Friday helped set up Springer’s game-changing triple that turned a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 lead, an example of the aggressive approach Schneider hopes his team will continue into October and after. “I like it when the lineup continues to respond and take hits, walk at work, and then if the home runs are done,” he said. “(Friday) was the perfect storm of damage with a full-count, two-out, George-triangle homer with (Jordan) Lyles kind of, it’s in, it’s not in. Tough decision. I understand all this. We have the ability to reverse the leverage of a game in one move. (Friday) was obviously very indicative of that. When you play in very meaningful games against very good pitchers, things like Tapia’s walk have to happen. All these things have to go the right way.” Right now, it’s too much for the Blue Jays.
