basis

JJ Bleday hit a three-run homer during a seven-run third inning, Mason Barnett recovered after giving up four runs in the first inning, and the Athletics beat the Angels 10-4 on Friday night.

Barnett (1-1) hit a batter and walked three — two with the bases loaded — during a shaky first inning, but the 24-year-old right-hander blanked the Angels on one hit and struck out eight over the next four innings to earn his first win in his second big league start.

Angels right-hander José Soriano (10-10), who threw 12⅔ scoreless innings in his previous two starts, was rocked for eight runs and six hits in 2⅓ innings, with five strikeouts and four walks.

The Athletics (65-77) trailed 4-2 when Shea Langeliers opened the third with a single and Tyler Soderstrom hit a one-out single. Jacob Wilson walked to load the bases, and Lawrence Butler drove in a run with an infield single.

Zack Gelof’s RBI single made it 4-4, Wilson scored on a wild pitch for a 5-4 lead, and Bleday’s opposite-field shot made it 8-4. Brent Rooker was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded for the final run.

A’s relievers Justin Sterner, Elvis Alvarado and Michael Kelly combined for four hitless innings, and Butler capped a three-hit night with a solo homer in the ninth.

José Ureña gave up two hits and struck out six in five scoreless innings for the Angels (66-75).

Key moment: Bleday turned a 5-4 A’s lead into an 8-4 cushion in the third when he drove a full-count sinker from Soriano 353 feet to left for his 13th homer.

Key stat: Soriano and Barnett combined to throw 63 pitches, walk six, hit a batter and give up six runs in an ugly 30-minute first inning.

Up next: Athletics RHP J.T. Ginn (2-6, 5.17 ERA) opposes Angels LHP Yusei Kikuchi (6-10, 3.83) on Saturday night.

PITTSBURGH — It was a pivotal moment, in a pivotal game, in what’s become a pivotal week for the Dodgers in the National League West standings.

Which, rather predictably given their recently floundering form, meant they found a new way to mess it all up.

In the top of the second inning on Wednesday night at PNC Park, the Dodgers appeared to be in optimal position.

Earlier in the day, the second-place San Diego Padres had been swept by the woebegone Baltimore Orioles, opening the door for the Dodgers to extend their 2½-game lead in the division. And despite trailing by a run in their own showdown against a last-place team, the Dodgers had the Pittsburgh Pirates on the ropes, loading the bases with no outs for a chance to take the lead.

The task, at that point, was simple.

Get the ball in play. Manufacture some early scoring. And, at the very least, set a positive tone for a night in which the NL West lead could grow.

“That’s a situation where you get shorter with your swing, use the big part of the field and you’ve got to drive in a run,” manager Dave Roberts said.

That approach, however, never materialized.

Over the rest of an inexplicable 3-0 loss to the Pirates, what happened next would instead loom large.

First, second-year outfielder Andy Pages came up, worked another full count against Pittsburgh starter Braxton Ashcraft … then went down swinging chasing a slider that would’ve been ball four.

Next, rookie infielder Alex Freeland again ran the count full, got an elevated slider up in the zone to hit … but kept the bat on his shoulder as the umpire rung him up for a called third strike.

A Kiké Hernández flyout would ultimately end the inning. But it was the first two at-bats that had Roberts fuming afterward.

“You never want to say that one inning kind of win or loses a game,” Roberts said. “But the second inning, bases loaded, nobody out — I just felt that we had two bad at-bats and didn’t come away with anything.”

“That flipped the game,” Roberts later added. “It flipped the momentum.”

Indeed, on a night the Dodgers (78-61) failed to score any of their 11 baserunners or record a hit in seven at-bats with men in scoring position, no sequence was more frustrating than their second-inning fizzle.

It was the latest epitome of the team failing to produce in a clutch situation. Another example of their roster flunking some basic fundamentals.

“We’ve got to collectively get all of us on board understanding the magnitude of each at-bat, each situation,” Roberts bemoaned from his office postgame. “I sound repetitive [about how] it’s got to get better. But I do believe that having the right approach, the right mindset, the right urgency in a particular at-bat lends itself to better results.”

This has been a recurring theme for the Dodgers during the second half of the season; the kind of fine-margin miscues that have haunted them during a perplexing 22-29 stretch since July 4.

Sometimes, it’s their big-name superstars that falter. In other cases, it’s younger contributors like Pages and Freeland who fail to execute when required.

The only constant: Every time the Dodgers seem to be turning a corner, they find another way to trip themselves up.

“I do believe that the guys that we have in the room are capable of putting together consistent team at-bats of urgency from the first pitch on,” Roberts said. “But at the end of the day — and I’m sure our players are echoing the same message — we just got to get it done.”

This week’s series at PNC Park (the fourth straight the Dodgers have dropped here over the last four years) has exemplified the club’s maddening current rut in other ways.

One night, they explode at the plate for seven runs … only for their pitching staff to give up nine as it did in Tuesday’s loss.

The next, they piece together a decent pitching effort (even after Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his scheduled start because of an illness) … only for the offense to squander every single opportunity they had to take control of the contest (and lose catcher Will Smith along the way to a bruised hand he suffered on an errant foul ball, though postgame X-rays came back negative).

“We haven’t really put it together at all for a while now,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “We need to start playing better.”

On Wednesday, the Pirates jumped in front in the first inning, when Bryan Reynolds homered in the 12th pitch of his at-bat off spot starter Emmet Sheehan. Andrew McCutchen doubled the lead in the second, adding to the sting of the Dodgers’ squandered bases-loaded opportunity with a line-drive home run in the game’s very next at-bat.

After that, “we just really couldn’t put anything else together,” Roberts said.

Or, more precisely, they failed to finish any other chances off.

The Dodgers loaded the bases again with two out in the third, before Alex Call hit a dribbler up the first-base line to retire the side.

The team had two runners aboard again in the fifth and seventh, but continued to come up empty each and every time.

“We had guys on, we just didn’t get the hit,” said Freeman, who rolled into a fifth-inning double-play to extinguish that threat. “Frustrating night.”

The only saving grace right now is that the Padres (who have lost four in a row while dealing with a string of deflating injuries) haven’t made up ground against them.

“I’m very much aware of that,” Roberts said. “But they’re feeling the same thing we are. We’ve got to control what we can control. And we’re certainly not.”

A different approach in Wednesday’s second inning might have changed all that. Instead, it served as another regrettable failure, turning a potentially pivotal chance to stretch the division lead into one of the season’s most dispiriting losses.

Smith update

Smith exited Wednesday’s game after the second inning, when a foul tip bounced off the dirt and hit his right throwing hand as it was hanging behind his right thigh.

Because Smith’s X-rays came back negative, Roberts said the club was hopeful he could avoid the injured list. However, given the swelling and soreness he was feeling postgame, the team was still planning to call up a third catcher on Thursday for more roster insurance.

Democratic leaders in the United States are warning that President Donald Trump does not have the authority to deploy US troops to Chicago amid reports of administration plans to send National Guard soldiers to the Midwestern city.

Trump, a Republican, has said he would likely expand the deployment of federal forces to oversee policing in Washington, DC, to other cities, including Chicago. On Sunday, he also suggested the possibility of sending troops to Democratic-run Baltimore in Maryland.

Democratic House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday denounced plans to deploy federal forces to Chicago. Crime rates, including murders, have declined in Chicago in the last year.

“There’s no basis, no authority for Donald Trump to potentially try to drop federal troops into the city of Chicago,” Jeffries told CNN.

The US Constitution gives the power of policing to the states.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the Pentagon has been drawing up plans for a potential troop deployment in Chicago for weeks.

JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, where Chicago is located, was quick to reject the push.

“Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he is causing working families,” JB Pritzker said in a statement.

Leveling criticism at Maryland’s Democratic Governor Wes Moore over crime rates in Baltimore, Trump said he was prepared to deploy troops there, too.

In July, the Baltimore police department said there had been a double-digit reduction in gun violence compared to the previous year. The city has had 84 homicides so far this year – the fewest in over 50 years, according to the mayor.

“If Wes Moore needs help… I will send in the ‘troops,’ which is being done in nearby DC, and quickly clean up the Crime,” Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Sunday.

Since he entered politics in 2015, Trump has described major cities, which are almost all run by Democrats, as infested by crime, drugs and homelessness.

That perception echoed some rural conservative attitudes towards liberal cities.

Earlier this month, several Republican governors sent hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington at Trump’s request. The president has depicted the capital as being in the grip of a crime wave, although official data shows crime is down in the city.

On Sunday, Trump asserted without evidence that there was now no crime in the US capital and credited it to his deployment of troops and hundreds of federal law enforcement personnel.

The US president’s critics have warned that the crackdown in Washington may be a test run for the broader militarisation of US cities.

Trump has much less power over Chicago and Baltimore than he does over the District of Columbia, the seat of the federal government, which is not part of a US state.

Title 10 of the US Code, a federal law that outlines the role of the US Armed Forces, includes a provision allowing the president to deploy National Guard units to repel an invasion, to suppress a rebellion or to allow the president to execute the law.

Trump cited this provision, known as Section 12406, when he sent National Guard units to California earlier this year to counter protests, over the objections of Governor Gavin Newsom.

In the case of Chicago, Trump may argue that local laws that bar city officials from cooperating with federal immigration agents justify the military presence.

Trump is almost certain to face legal challenges if he uses Section 12406 to send National Guard troops from Republican-led states into Democratic strongholds.

Sunday was one of those cloudless late-summer Dodger Stadium afternoons in which the flags in center field stirred lazily in the slight breeze and the air felt far hotter than the thermometer said.

The temperature was 83 degrees at the matinee’s first pitch, yet many fans crowded into the top rows of the reserved and loge levels and stood atop the outfield pavilions in search of shade from an unrelenting sun that hovered directly overhead.

As for the Dodgers, they were just as hot as the weather until the bullpen gate swung open at the start of the eighth inning Sunday, with relievers Blake Treinen and Alex Vesia giving up three solo home runs in the span of six batters in a 5-4 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays.

The deciding run scored when second baseman Ernie Clement drove Vesia’s first pitch over the wall in left field for this eighth homer of the season, ruining another splendid outing from starter Tyler Glasnow and a big offensive day from Shohei Ohtani, who reached base four times before striking out against reliever Mason Fluharty with the bases loaded in the ninth.

Mookie Betts followed by grounding into a force out, the second time in as many innings the Dodgers left the bases loaded. The Dodgers had 10 hits and 13 walks on the afternoon but were one for 10 with runners in scoring position, stranding 16.

Even more important: The loss, combined with the Padres’ win over the Boston Red Sox in San Diego, cut the Dodgers’ lead in the National League West to two games.

The Blue Jays came to Los Angeles after a three-game sweep of the Rockies in Colorado in which they scored 45 runs and had 63 hits. Against the Dodgers, Toronto scored just three times and had just 17 hits entering the fifth inning. Glasnow did his part, giving up two runs and four hits through 5 2/3 innings, striking out eight. It was his fifth stellar start in six outings since returning from an inflamed shoulder last month and he left with a 3-2 lead, the first time since his first start of the season in March that he left a game with a chance at a win.

But the bullpen couldn’t hold it, with Treinen giving up back-to-back homers to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Addison Barger with one out in the eighth. After the Dodgers came back to tie the score on a bases-loaded walk to Freddie Freeman in the bottom of the inning, Vesia gave the lead right back in the ninth.

Glasnow, as he has all season, deserved a better fate. He has given up more than two runs just once in his last nine starts and has given up just 20 hits in 34 2/3 innings since returning from the injured list. Yet he has little positive to show for it, with nine of his 11 starts ending with no decision despite a 3.06 ERA and .172 opponents’ batting average.

“I really like the way that he’s got the blinders on it, and nothing’s affecting him,” Dodger manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “To say a player, specifically Tyler, is unflappable is a big compliment, and I think that that’s something he’s worked on because he gets emotional.

“There’s things that you can’t control at times, and his ability to kind of lock back in, he’s been really, really impressive.”

Glasnow got off to a slow start, getting an out on his first pitch then missing the strike zone on five of his next six before Guerrero — who came in hitting .364 lifetime against Glasnow — drove a run-scoring double to the wall in center field.

But by the time Glasnow came out to start the second inning, he had a lead. Ohtani evened the score, lining his 23^rd career leadoff home run into the right-field bleachers to run his hitting streak to nine games, matching his season high. Two outs later, Freeman put the Dodgers in front, slicing an 0-2 pitch over the wall in left-center for his 14^th homer of the season.

Glasnow, who continued to struggle with his control, nearly gave the lead back, loading the bases on two walks sandwiched around a double by Joey Loperfido. But after a mound visit from pitching coach Mark Prior, the right-hander got Nathan Lukes to ground into an inning-ending double play.

That allowed the Dodgers to extend their lead to 3-1 in the bottom of the second when Freeman walked with the bases loaded.

Glasnow wouldn’t be in trouble again until the sixth, when Bo Bichette led off with a single and came around to score on a two-out flare to right by Ty France, cutting the lead to 3-2. That drove Glasnow from the mound an out short of the seventh inning.

The Dodgers missed a chance to add to that lead shortly after Glasnow left when Ohtani was thrown out at third on the front end of a double steal with two on and two out and Freeman at the plate to end the sixth. That proved costly when Treinen, the fourth reliever summoned to close out the game, coughed on the lead on the back-to-back homers.

Freeman wouldn’t be denied his next opportunity, drawing his second bases-loaded walk of the game, and the fourth walk of the inning, on a full-count pitch to tie the score with two out in the eighth.

But while the Dodgers would load the bases again the ninth, they would get no more.

Julio Rodríguez, Randy Arozarena and Jorge Polanco homered, Logan Evans gave up one run in five innings, and the Seattle Mariners beat the Angels 4-2 on Thursday night.

Rodríguez, who stole third base in the first inning, has 15 home runs and 20 stolen bases this season. The 24-year-old is the first player in MLB history with at least 15 homers and 20-plus stolen bases in each of their first four seasons.

Evans (4-3), a 24-year-old rookie, allowed three hits and walked three with three strikeouts. Andrés Muñoz pitched a scoreless ninth for his 23rd save.

Rodríguez hit a solo shot off Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi (4-7) and Arozarena added a two-run homer to give the Mariners a 3-1 lead in the fifth.

Mike Trout doubled and then scored when Nolan Schanuel followed with a single in the first for the Angels. Zach Neto added an RBI single in the seventh.

The Mariners acquired first baseman Josh Naylor from Arizona earlier Thursday, ahead of the trade deadline on July 31.

Key moment: Trout drew a four-pitch walk to load the bases with two out in the ninth before Muñoz got Schanuel to line out to end the game.

Key stat: Trout has 437 total bases and 146 runs scored in his career against Seattle, both of which are records. Rafael Palmeiro and Rickey Henderson hold the previous marks of 435 total bases and 145 runs, respectively.

Up next: Seattle’s Bryan Woo (8-5, 2.91 ERA) is scheduled to start Friday against José Soriano (7-7, 3.73) in the second of a four-game series.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says bases in Indiana and New Jersey can house detained immigrants without affecting military readiness — a step toward potentially detaining thousands of people on bases on U.S. soil.

Hegseth notified members of Congress from both states this week of the proposal to temporarily house detained immigrants at Camp Atterbury in Indiana and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.

President Trump has moved to aggressively detain and deport people in the country illegally, a push that has swept up large numbers of immigrants, including many with no prior criminal records, and forced federal authorities to find places to house them.

Hegseth said the presence of the detainees would not negatively affect the bases’ operations or training. Officials have not said when detainees could begin arriving at the facilities or if other military bases are under consideration.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump’s border chief, Tom Homan, said there are about 60,000 beds available for detained immigrants and the goal is to expand to 100,000.

“We’re looking for any available bed space we can get that meets the detention standards we’re accustomed to,” Homan said Friday. “The faster we get the beds, the more people we can take off the street.”

Democratic lawmakers from both states and civil rights advocates condemned the idea of housing immigrants at the bases, questioning the effect on military resources and the justification for so many detentions.

“Using our country’s military to detain and hold undocumented immigrants jeopardizes military preparedness and paves the way for [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids in every New Jersey community,” New Jersey’s Democratic delegation said in a statement.

Democratic Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana said his questions about detainee conditions have gone unanswered by the Trump administration.

He cited concerns raised about conditions at other facilities and said, “The fact that ICE has detained so many individuals that they now need to expand detention space in Indiana is disturbing.”

Amol Sinha, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, said in a statement that housing immigrants in military facilities sets a dangerous precedent “and is contrary to the values embedded in our Constitution.”

Both of the bases identified by Hegseth have housed Afghan or Ukrainian refugees in recent years.

During Trump’s first administration, he authorized the use of military bases to detain immigrant children — including Army installations at Ft. Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas.

In 2014, President Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central American families who crossed the border.

Klepper and Freking write for the Associated Press. AP writers Christine Fernando and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

Two groups of commercial pilots reject initial probe into the deadly June 12 crash, calling it a ‘reckless and unfounded insinuation’.

Two groups of commercial pilots have rejected claims that human error caused an Air India plane crash that killed 260 people after a preliminary investigation found the aircraft’s engine fuel switches had been turned off.

The Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) and the Airline Pilots’ Association of India (ALPA India) issued statements on Sunday after the release of the initial findings, which showed that fuel control switches to the engines of Flight AI171 were moved from the “run” to the “cutoff” position moments before last month’s deadly impact.

The report sparked speculation by several independent aviation experts that deliberate or inadvertent pilot action may have caused the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner to crash soon after takeoff from Ahmedabad in western India.

Flight AI171 was headed to London’s Gatwick Airport when it crashed on June 12.

The report on the crash, issued on Saturday by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), did not offer any conclusions or apportion blame for the disaster but indicated that one pilot asked the other why he cut off the fuel and the second pilot responded that he had not.

After the switches flipped, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner immediately began to lose thrust and altitude, according to the report.

One pilot can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he had cut off the fuel. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report said.

It did not identify which remarks were made by the flight’s captain and which by the first officer or which pilot transmitted “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” just before the crash.

No more details about the cockpit dialogue between the pilots were revealed.

The ICPA said it was “deeply disturbed by speculative narratives, … particularly the reckless and unfounded insinuation of pilot suicide”.

“There is absolutely no basis for such a claim at this stage,” it said in a statement. “It is deeply insensitive to the individuals and families involved.

“To casually suggest pilot suicide without verified evidence is a gross violation of ethical reporting and a disservice to the dignity of the profession.”

The ICPA was referring to a number of aviation experts suggesting engine fuel control switches can only be moved deliberately and manually.

United States-based aviation safety expert John Cox earlier said a pilot would not be able to accidentally move the fuel switches that feed the engines. “You can’t bump them and they move,” he told the Reuters news agency.

ALPA India, which has 800 members, also accused the investigative agency of “secrecy” surrounding the investigation, saying “suitably qualified personnel” were not involved in it.

“We feel that the investigation is being driven in a direction presuming the guilt of pilots and we strongly object to this line of thought,” ALPA India President Sam Thomas said in a statement issued on Saturday.

ALPA requested the AAIB be included as “observers so as to provide the requisite transparency in the investigations”.

Meanwhile, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said the probe into last month’s crash is far from over and it is unwise to jump to any premature conclusions.

Wilson added: “The preliminary report identified no cause nor made any recommendations, so I urge everyone to avoid drawing premature conclusions as the investigation is far from over.”

The crash killed all but one of the 242 people on board as well as 19 people on the ground.

MILWAUKEE — During the Dodgers’ season-long five-game losing streak this week, manager Dave Roberts cited a lack of “fight” from his lineup as the most troubling trend in the team’s recent skid.

On Wednesday in Milwaukee, more fight finally returned — only for the Brewers to still land the knockout punch.

In a 3-2 loss at American Family Field that extended the Dodgers’ losing streak to six games, the lineup once again scuffled in a five-hit performance while closer Tanner Scott blew a ninth-inning lead to waste Tyler Glasnow’s encouraging return from the injured list.

It was a grind of a game, with the Dodgers scoring their only runs on a bases-loaded walk following a hit-and-run play and a sacrifice fly that briefly gave them a 2-1 lead. Alas, Scott gave up a game-tying RBI single to Andrew Vaughn in the ninth, Jackson Chourio walked it off with another single against Kirby Yates in the bottom of the 10th, sending the scuffling Dodgers their longest losing skid since April 2019.

“Knowing the rough patch [we’re in], it’s really hard to take this one, because you just want to stop it,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas said.

“We had them where we wanted them,” Roberts echoed. “We just couldn’t finish it.”

Indeed, even on a day the Dodgers struggled to score despite generating more baserunners and cutting down on their recent binge of strikeouts, Glasnow’s solid return from the injured list had the club in position to win for most of the day.

Making his first start since going on the injured list in April because of a shoulder injury, and just his 28th start in two years with the Dodgers since signing a $136.5-million contract two winters ago, the lanky right-hander pitched decently over his five innings, giving up two hits and three walks with five strikeouts.

Glasnow ran into trouble in the second inning, when Christian Yelich singled on a first-pitch fastball, Isaac Collins drew a full-count walk, and both executed a double-steal to move into scoring position. A 10-pitch walk to Caleb Durbin — ending on a curveball that never ducked into the strike zone — loaded the bases with one out.

However, Glasnow responded, jamming Jake Bauers with a sinker for a pop out before blowing Joey Ortiz away with an elevated 96 mph heater.

That sequence was Glasnow at his best: Going after hitters with his premium velocity, and showing no signs of the tentativeness — or, as Roberts described it in his pregame address, “search mode” — that has often derailed his Dodgers career.

“[I’m focusing on] going out and pitching, just toeing the mound and kind of getting into that rhythm and keeping the routine,” Glasnow said afterward. “Just going out, be athletic and trust the trainers, strength room, stay healthy and just keep pitching.”

As Glasnow settled into a rhythm, however, the Dodgers (56-38) continued to toil at the plate.

Having scored only one run in four of their previous five games, a shorthanded lineup, which got Tommy Edman back from injury but once again was without Teoscar Hernández in the starting lineup, struggled to get a beat on crafty veteran left-hander José Quintana.

With only a 90-mph fastball and a flurry of funky off-speed pitches, the 36-year-old navigated the first four innings without giving up a hit.

A breakthrough finally came in the fifth inning. After Rojas drew a leadoff walk (he also had two singles Wednesday), the Dodgers executed a well-timed hit-and-run play, drawing the second baseman out of position just as Esteury Ruiz lined a single through the hole he vacated. With two outs, James Outman then checked his swing just enough to draw a full-count walk, loading the bases for Shohei Ohtani to plate the game’s first run on a four-pitch free pass (benefitting from a couple of borderline ball calls).

And while that 1-0 lead didn’t last long — in the bottom of the fifth, Glasnow walked leadoff man Bauers, moved him to second with a balk, then watched helplessly as Bauers stole third and scored on a throw that bounced to the outfield — the Dodgers went back in front in the seventh when Mookie Betts lifted a bases-loaded sacrifice fly.

The Dodgers, though, squandered opportunities to stretch the lead from, leaving the bases loaded to end the seventh inning before stranding more baserunners in both the eighth and ninth.

“I thought the way we competed, I liked that,” Roberts said. “Took some good at-bats. I thought we fought. But couldn’t put a crooked number up.”

That left Scott with too little margin to complete a four-out save. While the left-hander stranded a runner at second base he inherited in the eighth, three ninth-inning singles from the Brewers tied the score, culminating with a broken-bat, bloop single from Vaughn that made it 2-2.

Then, after Brewers closer Trevor Megill struck out the side in the top of the 10th, Yates surrendered the game-winning single to Churio in the bottom half of the inning, dealing the Dodgers their second-straight series sweep and an ever-mounting sense of frustration entering the final days before the All-Star break.

“We can’t really feel sorry about ourselves, because there’s a lot of season left, and we know what we’re looking for,” Rojas said. “We’re looking to win another championship, and playing this kind of baseball is not gonna get us there.”

TORONTO — Bo Bichette homered and scored the deciding run to lead the Toronto Blue Jays to their season-high eighth straight victory, 3-2 over the Angels on Sunday.

The American League East-leading Blue Jays improved to 52-38, sweeping a homestand of seven of more games for the first time since 1994 and second in franchise history.

Toronto drew even on with Bichette’s leadoff homer in the fourth inning. His 12th homer came after his error in the top of the inning loaded the bases for the Angels. Davis Schneider drove in Bichette in the sixth inning with a single down the left-field line.

Mike Trout homered for the Angels with two out in the first.

After Bichette’s homer, Toronto went ahead in the fourth on a two-out single from Joey Loperfido, who made his season debut. The Angels tied it in the fifth when Taylor Ward singled over Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman struck out nine in 5 2/3 innings, giving up two runs on seven hits and three walks. Tyler Anderson (2-6) yielded three runs on eight hits with two walks and two strikeouts in five-plus innings.

Reliever Ryan Burr (1-0) got the victory in his first outing of the season after dealing with a right-shoulder injury. Jeff Hoffman picked up his 22nd save.

Key moment

With the bases loaded and one out in the fourth inning, Gausman coaxed Gustavo Campero into a 1-3 double play.

Key stat

The Blue Jays have 52 wins with six games remaining before the All-Star break. The club record for victories before the break is 53, set in 1985 and matched in 1992.

Up next

Yusei Kikuchi, who was named to the AL All-Star team on Sunday, was scheduled to start for the Angels at home Monday night against Texas. Jose Berrios (4-3) was set to start for Toronto on Monday night in Chicago against the White Sox’s Sean Burke (4-7).