The Toronto Blue Jays have leapt five teams in the standings with one week of good baseball and are now on the cusp of a wild-card spot.
On Sunday, the Blue Jays can move one step closer to that post-season berth as they eye a three-game sweep of the New York Yankees with Cy Young candidate Dylan Cease on the hill at Rogers Centre.
First pitch flies at 1:37 p.m. ET / 10:37 a.m. PT on Sportsnet or Sportsnet+.
The Blue Jays overcame Cease's main competition in the race for the award, Yankees righty Cam Schlittler, in a 4-1 win on Saturday.
Toronto has now won five of its last six games and 13 of 19, climbing from five games back in the AL wild-card race to only 0.5 back of the over that span. Its FanGraphs playoff odds were a season-low 4.3 per cent on Aug. 6, and have since climbed to 19.5 per cent.
The Texas Rangers held that final wild-card spot entering action Sunday.
Cease, 30, was hit uncharacteristically hard in his last start, allowing three runs on five hits over five innings against the Boston Red Sox. He had allowed only four runs over his previous six outings, earning him AL pitcher of the month in July.
The usually hard-throwing right-hander has pitched to a 2.40 ERA with an AL-leading 191 strikeouts and 57 walks over 131.1 innings, but has experienced diminished velocity over his last three outings.
Cease's average four-seam fastball velocity dropped from 97.5 m.p.h. to 95.9 m.p.h. after he set a new career high in pitches thrown in two of his previous three starts — 118 in a no-hit bid against the San Francisco Giants and 120 in a complete-game one-hitter at the Red Sox.
The Yankees counter with red-hot lefty Ryan Weathers, who could pose problems for a Blue Jays order that's struggled against southpaws.
Weathers has a 0.74 ERA with 21 strikeouts and eight walks over his last four starts, and Toronto's .626 OPS against left-handed pitching ranks last in MLB.
The 26-year-old Weathers has logged a 3.69 ERA with 136 strikeouts and 37 walks over 126.2 innings.
Meanwhile, Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was placed on the seven-day concussion injured list on Saturday.
Guerrero left Friday's series-opening 3-1 win over the Yankees after he took a knee to the head from George Lombard Jr. while sliding into third base as the rookie shortstop scrambled to cover the bag.
It's Guerrero's first placement on the major-league IL in his career. He has now missed a career-high 10 games this season after missing only 18 from 2020 to 2025.
The Blue Jays selected outfielder Daz Cameron, who has a 1.045 OPS with three homers and 10 steals over 23 games with the triple-A Buffalo Bisons, to the MLB roster in a corresponding move.
Cameron will start in left field and bat seventh on Sunday, looking to come up from the minors and contribute as other recent Blue Jays additions Brett Bateman and Charles McAdoo have.
McAdoo played first base in Guerrero's absence on Saturday and drove in a pair of runs, including a decisive RBI double in the seventh.
Longtime Blue Jays prospect Ricky Tiedemann also made his MLB debut on Saturday, striking out two and allowing an earned run over 1.2 innings.
2:02