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Toronto Blue Jays second baseman Devon Travis left Friday’s ALCS matchup with the Cleveland Indians in the fifth inning with a knee injury. He has been ruled out for the rest of the postseason.

Continue for updates.

Travis Out for Remainder of Playoffs

Saturday, Oct. 15

Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com reported Justin Smoak will take Travis’ spot on the ALCS roster.

Atkins Comments on Injury

Saturday, Oct. 15

“There’s enough information to suggest that the injury has changed and there is more of an injury than just the bone bruise,” general manager Ross Atkins told reporters.

Atkins said Travis suffered a separate knee injury that was in the same area but independent of his previous injury. 

Travis’ Injury Comes at Terrible Time for Blue Jays

Travis had missed Games 2 and 3 of Toronto’s ALDS win over the Texas Rangers with a bone bruise in his knee. 

Darwin Barney replaced Travis during the ALDS but went hitless in seven at-bats. Ryan Goins was added to the ALCS roster after not appearing in the ALDS because the Jays wanted an extra infielder in case of an injury.

With Travis out, Toronto will be without one of its most important offensive weapons. He hit .300/.332/.454 with 11 home runs and 50 runs batted in during the regular season, his first full MLB campaign.

With the Jays attempting to avoid falling short in the postseason, losing Travis is a crushing blow.

Follow Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) on Twitter.

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Canadians dig the long ball.

If that wasn’t true before the Toronto Blue Jays completed a sweep of the Texas Rangers Sunday night with a 7-6 extra-inning win, it’s certainly true now.

Toronto got a pair of home runs Sunday off the bats of first baseman Edwin Encarnacion and catcher Russell Martin. In all, seven Jays hitters have combined for nine home runs in the team’s four postseason games.

The Blue Jays have won all four contests, blasting past the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Wild Card Game and casting aside the AL West-winning Rangers.

Now, as they train their sights on the American League Championship Series, they’ve served notice to the Junior Circuit and the rest of the baseball world: There’s a threat looming north of the border.

Before we move on to the Jays’ chances, let’s look back at their tussle with Texas.

This wasn’t just any division-series scrum. There’s bad blood brewing between the Rangers and Blue Jays dating back to last year’s ALDS, when Jose Bautista let fly the bat flip heard ’round the galaxy.

Then, in May, Bautista got beaned, made a hard slide into second and met the mean right hook of Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor.

There were no such fireworks in the 2016 Rangers/Jays ALDS. But a fan did craft a stinging sign that burned especially hard after Toronto’s Game 3 win, via Error Free in 2015:

We’re not here to pile on the Rangers, who had a memorable season despite their ho-hum plus-eight regular-season run differential, easily the worst among playoff qualifiers.

In fact, yours truly picked Texas to advance to the ALCS. 

The point is to highlight these Jays and the way they’ve steamrolled through October. After busting the franchise’s 22-year playoff drought in 2015, Toronto is threatening to mimic those ’93 Jays and snag a Commissioner’s Trophy.

The power numbers leap off the screen. Really, though, the Jays are advancing a diverse attack.

Their deep starting rotation has been mostly exemplary, with Marco Estrada and J.A. Happ allowing two earned runs in 13.2 innings, Marcus Stroman fanning six in six innings and Aaron Sanchez showing flashes of brilliance in his uneven start Sunday against Texas.

Closer Roberto Osuna returned from his Wild Card Game injury scare and struck out six in five scoreless postseason innings, fronting a bullpen that has surrendered just two runs in 14 innings overall.

The heart of Toronto’s offensive, though, has been the bats. 

Encarnacion has three homers and a 1.411 OPS. Bautista boasts two home runs and five RBI. Ezequiel Carrera, Kevin Pillar, Troy Tulowitzki, Melvin Upton Jr. and Martin have also gone deep.

On Sunday, Toronto plated the winning run on an errant throw by Odor, much to the delight of the grudge-nursing Rogers Centre faithful. 

Josh Donaldson has been nursing a hip issue, which made his walk-off dash all the more impressive.

“With all the fans screaming, it kind of numbs the pain a little bit,” Donaldson said, per Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star. “It gives your legs that jolt of adrenaline.”

For the most part, the Jays’ trip to the ALCS is predicated on thump.

Encarnacion and Bautista are pending free agents. It’s likely, if not certain, this Jays team will be busted up in 2017.

That endows this run with a special, pressing significance.

Now Toronto awaits the winner of the ALDS matchup between the Cleveland Indians and favored Boston Red Sox, which Cleveland leads 2-0. The Jays went 3-4 against the Indians and 10-9 against Boston this season, for what it’s worth.

No matter who comes out on top, they’ll grapple with a Toronto team that’s flying high.

The Jays have plenty going for them. But maybe nothing is more compelling than a certain F-word, as Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal noted:

They smacked around Rangers ace Cole Hamels in Game 1. They vanquished co-ace Yu Darvish in Game 2. They dramatically finished the job Sunday in front of a roaring horde of Canadians who, presumably, dig the long ball.

And, more to the point, dig their Blue Jays.

All statistics current as of Sunday and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Francisco Liriano suffered a concussion in Game 2 of his team’s playoff series against the Texas Rangers after being hit in the head by a line drive off the bat of Carlos Gomez.

It’s unclear when he will return to the field.

Continue for updates.

Liriano Replaced on ALDS Roster

Saturday, Oct. 8

Scott MacArthur of TSN reported the Blue Jays have replaced Liriano with Danny Barnes on their American League Division Series roster.

Latest on Liriano’s Status

Saturday, Oct. 8

Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com reported Liriano is in Major League Baseball’s concussion protocol.

ESPN.com’s Marly Rivera reported Liriano was released from the hospital and flew back to Toronto with the Blue Jays.

Per USA Today‘s Jorge L. Ortiz, Liriano was taken to an ambulance on a stretcher while wearing a neck brace.

Ortiz added that Liriano was being checked out after a liner off Carlos Gomez’s bat hit him in the head.

The incident occurred when Liriano tried to get out of the way of Gomez’s comebacker in the bottom of the eighth inning. The ball struck the pitcher on the side of the head and caromed into the outfield.

Liriano a Lockdown Reliever for Blue Jays

The Blue Jays starting rotation has done a terrific job of containing Texas’ offense so far in the ALDS. Marco Estrada and J.A. Happ have earned wins in each of the first two games, allowing a combined two runs on 13 hits with 11 strikeouts in 13.1 innings.

Liriano pitched to four batters in Friday’s game, recording one out and allowing two runs on two hits and one walk. He tossed 1.2 scoreless innings in the Blue Jays’ Wild Card Game win over the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday.

The Blue Jays added Liriano before the Aug. 1 non-waiver trade deadline to provide depth and take pressure off Aaron Sanchez, who threw a total of 125.1 innings at the major league level over the previous two years and surpassed that total by mid-July this year.

Losing Liriano is not a problem the Blue Jays wanted to deal with at this point in the season. However, they are set up well. Sanchez, Happ, Estrada and Marcus Stroman form an excellent starting quartet alongside solid depth in the bullpen, so Toronto can get by in the short term without the big left-hander.

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From the way it was being billed, the American League Division Series showdown between the Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers sounded less like a baseball affair and more like a prizefight.

If that’s how it is, I’m compelled to say the Blue Jays have scored a first-round knockdown.

There was plenty of energy in Globe Life Park in Arlington, Texas, at the outset of Game 1 on Thursday afternoon—rightfully so in light of the still-fresh memory of Rougned Odor punching Jose Bautista, not to mention the roots of said punch in last year’s ALDS showdown. With that backdrop in place, how could anything other than a brutal back-and-forth ensue?

Well, how about a 10-1 drubbing in favor of the invading villains instead?

None other than Bautista provided the exclamation point with a three-run homer in the ninth inning, but the life had been sucked out of the stadium long before that. In fact, the win expectancy chart from FanGraphs makes no secret of where that happened:

That five-run third inning featured an RBI double by Josh Donaldson, an RBI single by Bautista and a groan-inducing, base-clearing triple by Troy Tulowitzki. It took Cole Hamels more than 40 pitches to get through it all, and boy did it feel like it had gone from a 50-50 game to one the Blue Jays had roughly a 90 percent chance of winning.

“We’re baseball players, not UFC fighters,” Bautista told Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet, “And we come here to play ballgames.”

All the Blue Jays needed to hang on was for Marco Estrada not to pull a Hamels and have a meltdown of his own. It wasn’t much of a challenge—granted—but he accepted it all the same.

Estrada did give up the Rangers’ lone run, but it came in the ninth inning after he had already hurled eight dominant frames. In all, he pitched 8.1 innings, struck out six with no walks and allowed only four hits.

As good as that line makes his performance sound, it was somehow even better than that. Case in point: One of the hits Estrada gave up was a soft trickler to first base off the bat of Adrian Beltre that had the characteristics of a batted ball that otherwise goes for a .000 batting average, according to Baseball Savant.

The Rangers needed more lucky hits like that, and Estrada just didn’t allow them. He was locating his fastball and keeping Texas hitters off balance with his ball-on-string changeup. Shi Davidi of Sportsnet would know when Estrada has a good changeup, so we should take his word for it that it was especially good in Game 1:

Estrada isn’t the most impressive name in a Blue Jays rotation that also features 20-game winner J.A. Happ, American League ERA champ Aaron Sanchez and fan favorite Marcus Stroman. But his Game 1 performance is a good reminder of how capable he’s been in his two years with the team. He led the AL in hits per nine innings for a second straight season in 2016, and his ERA only regressed to 3.48 from 3.13 in 2015.

Indeed, the fact that Estrada isn’t the most impressive name in Toronto’s starting rotation is a reminder of how strong the unit is. Blue Jays starters led the American League with a 3.64 ERA, and John Gibbons will tell you they’re ready to keep that up in October.

“If you keep them in line, we feel good about them all,” the Blue Jays manager said before the series began, per Brittany Ghiroli of MLB.com. “That’s a big part of our strength is our starting rotation. And we’ve managed the last couple of months to keep them all rested.”

As for Toronto’s offense, what was lost amid the excitement (and confusion over Zach Britton’s absence) of Edwin Encarnacion’s walk-off home run against the Baltimore Orioles in the AL Wild Card Game was that Blue Jays hitters struggled for most of the evening. Right up until Encarnacion took his parrot for a stroll, they still seemed mired in the slump that dragged the team to a 13-16 showing in September and October.

But Thursday? Thursday was more like it.

The presence of Donaldson, Bautista and Encarnacion gives Toronto’s offense the image of a parade of home run hitters. But while they do hit their share of dingers, what Blue Jays hitters really excelled at in 2016 was being tough outs. They saw the most pitches per plate appearance of any team in 2016, a notable departure from their more aggressive style in 2015.

Especially in that big third inning, the Blue Jays looked more like themselves in Game 1. They gave Hamels no quarter, forcing him to throw perfect pitches that he just didn’t have. Facing an offense that can do that is just as demoralizing as facing one that’s a threat for a dinger at any moment.

Of course, it must be said that Hamels is easier prey these days than his reputation suggests. He pitched well for most of 2016 but fell on hard times with a 4.28 ERA in his last 11 starts. Hard contact (37.2 Hard%) became a big problem, an indication that something is up with the Rangers ace.

Still, this is no time to balk about how the Blue Jays walked into Arlington and stole Game 1.

No, sir. They made the Rangers, they of the American League’s best regular-season record, look overmatched. The Blue Jays did it with the same ingredients that made them a good team in their own right for most of 2016. And with Happ set to take the mound opposite Yu Darvish, who had issues of his own at the end of the year, they could well do it again in Game 2 on Friday.

The Blue Jays still need two more wins before we can call the fight in their favor. But with their opponent reeling and them not even sweating, they have to like their chances.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Fact: Edwin Encarnacion hit a three-run walk-off home run in the Toronto Blue Jays‘ 5-2 win over the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday night. He became the first player since the New York Yankees‘ Aaron Boone (2003 ALCS Game 7 vs. Boston Red Sox) to hit a walk-off in a winner-take-all game. 

Bleacher Report will be bringing sports fans the most interesting and engaging Cold Hard Fact of the day, presented by Coors Light.

    
Source: B/R Insights 

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This season, the Toronto Blue Jays and Baltimore Orioles couldn’t have played each other closer.

In 19 games, Toronto won 10 and Baltimore nine.

Each team protected its home-field advantage. The Orioles went 5-4 at Camden Yards, while the Blue Jays were 6-4 at Rogers Centre. MLB couldn’t have hand-picked two better teams to pit against one another in the American League Wild Card Game.

Follow along as we break down one of baseball’s most hotly contested division rivalries.

Begin Slideshow

The Toronto Blue Jays went 21 consecutive years without making the playoffs after winning the 1993 World Series. On Sunday, they clinched their second straight postseason spot.

The Detroit Tigers lost to the Atlanta Braves, 1-0, which locked up Toronto’s wild-card berth.

The team’s Twitter account celebrated the news:

Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet shared the celebratory team on the field:

Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet and Zwelling passed along some of the players enjoying the moment:

With their 2-1 win over the Boston Red Sox, they will host the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday in the American League‘s Wild Card Game matchup. 

The Blue Jays won the American League East last year but lost in the American League Championship Series to the World Series champion Kansas City Royals. Toronto led the major leagues in total runs in 2015 by an incredible margin of 127.

Things were different as Toronto clinched a wild-card berth this year after a heated battle with the likes of the Tigers, Orioles, Seattle Mariners and Houston Astros.

The Blue Jays weren’t just offensive mashers in 2016. While they rank eighth in the big leagues in total runs (757), pitching helped carry them to the postseason. In fact, the starting rotation, which ranks fourth in the majors in ERA (3.66), has been effective despite losing last year’s second-half ace, David Price, to the Boston Red Sox during the offseason.

Marcus Stroman, J.A. Happ, Aaron Sanchez, Marco Estrada and R.A. Dickey have all proved to be durable workhorses with at least 28 starts, and Toronto acquired southpaw Francisco Liriano from the Pittsburgh Pirates during the season to bolster the group.

Any pitching staff benefits from a loaded lineup, and that’s what Toronto brings to the table as it approaches the postseason.

Six players in the order have 20 or more home runs in 2016, and an offense that features Edwin Encarnacion, Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista, Troy Tulowitzki, Michael Saunders and Russell Martin will be a difficult out in any playoff series.

Donaldson, the 2015 American League MVP, hasn’t even been the lineup’s most feared slugger. That title goes to Encarnacion, who has drilled 42 home runs and tallied 127 RBI as one of the best run producers in the league. Donaldson isn’t far behind, though, with 37 long balls and 99 RBI.

The Blue Jays have the pieces to make a deep postseason run for the second year in a row. However, this time they will have to play in the pressure-packed, do-or-die American League Wild Card Game, and they will not have the luxury of being able to come back after falling behind 2-0, as they did in last year’s American League Division Series against the Texas Rangers.

The sluggers and formidable pitching must deliver right away if Toronto is going to challenge for its first World Series title since 1993.

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Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Joaquin Benoit suffered a leg injury attempting to join a bench-clearing brawl in Monday’s game against the New York Yankees.

Continue for updates.

Reliever Injured in Melee

Tuesday, Sept. 27

According to ESPN.com, Benoit suffered a torn left calf when he tripped while running in from the bullpen.

Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported the pitcher will miss at least the first round of the playoffs.

“It felt like something hit me,” Benoit said, according to ESPN.com. “I won’t be able to get on the mound anytime soon, so personally this is really disappointing.”

The incident occurred in the bottom of the second inning in Monday’s matchup, when Justin Smoak became the third player of the game hit by a pitch.

Toronto ended up losing the game 7-5, but the squad still remains in the first wild-card position as of Tuesday.

Before the injury, Benoit had been one of the hottest pitchers in baseball. Since coming over from the Seattle Mariners, the 39-year-old veteran has a 0.38 ERA, allowing just one earned run in 23.2 innings. He also has 10 holds and just one blown save in this stretch.

Roberto Osuna remains the team’s closer, but Jason Grilli and others will have to step up to solidify the bullpen in Benoit’s absence. 

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It was easy to like the Toronto Blue Jays last September. They made the deals of the summer. For the final two months of the regular season, all they did was win.

They had David Price, they had a lineup that didn’t stop, they had a boost from Marcus Stroman’s return and they had whatever momentum you get from going 21-6 in August and 18-9 in September.

They have almost none of that this year. No David Price, no big flashy trades, no big boost and no late-season momentum. Before Friday, they were 7-12 and had scored the fewest runs in baseball in September.

Blah.

Then the Blue Jays play a game like Friday’s, and suddenly you remember why you shouldn’t dismiss them as October contenders. They beat the New York Yankees 9-0, with Josh Donaldson hitting and Jose Bautista hitting and Edwin Encarnacion hitting and Troy Tulowitzki hitting, and suddenly you remember this is the same group that bludgeoned the Texas Rangers in the American League Division Series and took the soon-to-be champion Kansas City Royals to six games in the AL Championship Series.

Price isn’t here, but given his 6.17 ERA last October, are you going to give that as a reason the team that almost won last year can’t win this time around?

Bautista and Encarnacion are free agents this winter, but don’t you think they’d like to put on a big-stage demonstration of why they should be paid big bucks? Don’t you think they’d love to deliver in one last go-round with the organization they’ve served since 2008 (Bautista) and 2009 (Encarnacion)?

It’s been a fun ride—one that has energized the fanbase to the point where the Blue Jays lead the American League in attendance. They broke the longest postseason drought in baseball last year, but they also fell two wins shy of bringing the World Series north of the border for the first time since 1993.

The Blue Jays have had a wildly inconsistent offense—that’s offence in Canada—this season. I remember sitting in manager John Gibbons’ office one day in August listening to him bemoan the lack of big hits and then watching them score 19 runs in two days.

Sure enough, their run totals the last six days are one, zero, three, 10, one and now nine.

The inconsistency is the biggest reason the Jays haven’t been able to hang with the Boston Red Sox atop the American League East. The Red Sox won their ninth in a row Friday and lead the division by 5.5 games with nine days to play. The Jays had one seven-game winning streak in early July, but other than that they haven’t won more than four in a row all year.

They’ll still need a few more wins to clinch a playoff spot. The Detroit Tigers and Baltimore Orioles both won Friday night as well, so the Jays ended the night a half-game ahead of the Tigers and 1.5 ahead of the O’s. Two of those three teams likely make it, although the Houston Astros or Seattle Mariners could still sneak in.

The Jays don’t have an easy schedule. After three more games with the Yankees, they have three at home with the Orioles and three in Boston.

They do have Russell Martin, and history says teams with Martin play in October. The veteran catcher is in his 11th major league season, with his fourth organization. He’s been in the playoffs every year but two, and in one of those years (2010 with the Los Angeles Dodgers), he was hurt and couldn’t have played anyway.

Martin is like most of the other Blue Jays. He’s had an inconsistent season, and he’s having a lousy final month (.172 batting average).

I’d take him. I’d take that lineup. I’d take a chance with that team, in a postseason series against anyone.

The Blue Jays won’t be anyone’s favorite when the playoffs begin. But games like Friday’s serve as a reminder they’re absolutely dangerous enough to win.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.

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Toronto Blue Jays designated hitter Edwin Encarnacion hit his 40th home run of the season in Friday’s 5-0 win over the Los Angeles Angels, joining Carlos Delgado and outfielder Jose Bautista as the only players in franchise history to record multiple 40-homer seasons in a Toronto uniform, per Sportsnet Stats.

With the Blue Jays already leading 3-0 in the top of the ninth inning, Encarnacion drove a two-run blast far over the left-center field fence off Angels reliever Homer Bailey.

The insurance runs ultimately proved to be unnecessary, as Blue Jays closer Roberto Osuna held the Angels scoreless in the bottom of the ninth to keep his team two games behind the Boston Red Sox in the American League East.

With his contract up at the end of this season and the Blue Jays already having a ton of money committed to the offensive side, Jon Heyman of Today’s Knuckleball reported Encarnacion could join the Red Sox as a replacement for legendary designated hitter David Ortiz, who plans to retire at the end of this season.

One of MLB‘s most consistent hitters in recent years, the 33-year-old Encarnacion has hit 34 or more home runs in five consecutive seasons, topping out at 42 in 2012.

With 15 games remaining on the schedule, he still has plenty of time to set a new personal single-season best for long balls.

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