Sep 27, 2019 5 min read

The Tampa Bay Rays returned to the playoffs for the first time since 2013, clinching an AL wild card berth with a 6-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday night behind Tommy Pham’s two-run homer and 41/3 hitless innings from Tyler Glasnow.

Tampa Bay will play Oakland on the wild-card game on Wednesday night. The Rays will start Charlie Morton.

At 96-64, the low-budget Rays have their most wins since 2010 and can tie the team record of 97 set in 2008, when they won their only AL pennant and lost to Philadelphia in the World Series.

Tampa Bay began the night with a magic number of two to clinch, and Cleveland lost 8-2 at Washington while the Rays were in the eighth inning.

Baltimore 4, Boston 1: Renato Núñez hit a three-run homer, Asher Wojciechowski pitched six shutout innings and the Baltimore Orioles beat the Boston Red Sox, 4-1.

Wojciechowski (4-8) struck out six as the Orioles took the opener of the season-ending, three-game series for both clubs.

Baltimore also guaranteed that the Red Sox will finish with a losing record at Fenway Park, adding to the sting of missing the playoffs one year after winning the World Series. The Red Sox fell to 37-40 at Fenway, where they last finished with a losing record in 2014 – when they were also coming off a World Series championship.

Detroit-Chicago rained out: The doubleheader between the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox scheduled for Friday night was rained out, and as a result the teams will play only 161 games this season.

The twinbill started almost an hour late because of thunderstorms, and Detroit led 4-2 in the bottom of the fourth inning in the first game when the downpour returned. Play was stopped and the game was called after a wait of 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Tim Anderson, who entered leading the majors with a .338 average, was 0 for 2 for the White Sox when it was stopped. Those at-bats were wiped out, as was Grayson Greiner’s homer for Detroit and an RBI for Miguel Cabrera.

The teams will play a straight doubleheader on Saturday starting at 2:10 p.m. Detroit and Chicago meet in their season finale Sunday – with both teams far out of playoff contention, there will be no makeup added, leaving the clubs one short of the regular 162 games.

Sox plan to slash payroll: Boston Red Sox owners John Henry and Tom Werner intend to slash payroll to get under the luxury tax threshold next season, saying they fired Dave Dombrowski because of differing opinions on how to build for the future.

The pair made their first public comments Friday since parting with Dombrowski, the president of baseball operations, on Sept. 8. They said no matter who replaces Dombrowski, Alex Cora will return for a third season as manager.

Boston has had baseball’s highest payroll for two straight seasons and is on track to pay a $13 million luxury tax this year on a payroll of $243 million for purposes of the competitive balance tax, as it is formally known. That is $37 million over the tax threshold.

Next year’s threshold goes up to $208 million, and the Red Sox will be helped by the departure from the payroll of $56.82 million invested in five players: Rick Porcello ($20,625,000), Pablo Sandoval ($18,445,000), Mitch Moreland ($6.5 million), Steve Pearce ($6,250,000) and Eduardo Núñez ($5 million).

Interleague

Washington 8, Cleveland 2: The Cleveland Indians are in danger of sitting out the postseason for the first time since 2015, pushed to the brink of elimination from the AL wild-card race with an 8-2 loss to the playoff-bound Washington Nationals.

Manager Terry Francona’s Indians won the AL Central each of the past three years, but they spent most of this season in second place behind the Minnesota Twins, who took over the division lead for good on Aug. 13.

The Indians began the day third in the wild-card standings – behind Oakland and Tampa Bay – and in need of both a victory and some help. They knew they’d be eliminated with the combination of a loss to Washington and a win by the Rays at Toronto.

Gerardo Parra had four RBIs to lead the Nationals to their sixth straight win. The Indians have lost three straight, totaling just two runs and seven hits in the last two, and their loss clinched a wild-card berth for Oakland.

National League

Scherzer to start wild-card game: Washington Nationals manager Dave Martinez says that three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer will start the NL wild-card game.

Martinez says Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin will be available in relief for Tuesday night’s win-or-go-home game.

Washington will face either St. Louis or Milwaukee in the wild-card game. Any of the three could end up hosting the game, depending on how the rest of the regular season goes.

The winner will face the Los Angeles Dodgers in an NL Division Series.