Athletics at Toronto Blue Jays: Final Score & Recap
Line Score
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATH | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 8 | 0 |
| TOR | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 14 | 0 |
The Story
The Toronto Blue Jays walked off the Athletics 8-7 in eleven innings on March 28, 2026, at Rogers Centre in a game that swung violently in both directions before Toronto finally secured it. The DiamondIQ model opened with a 54 percent home win probability and closed at 100 percent, but the path there was anything but straightforward. Oakland seized control in the top of the seventh when Shea Langeliers launched a home run off Brendon Little, a swing that shifted win probability 30.2 points in the Athletics' favor and pushed Oakland ahead in what had been a low-scoring affair. With the Athletics holding that advantage into the bottom of the ninth, Toronto's season-opener appeared headed toward a deflating finish.
Alejandro Kirk changed everything with one swing. His home run off Michael Kelly in the bottom of the ninth represented the single largest win-probability shift of the night, a 47.1-point surge that pulled Toronto even and forced extra innings. The moment was immediately tempered, however, when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. lined out against Kelly in the bottom of the eighth — a sequence the DiamondIQ model flagged as a 29.8-point swing against Toronto, illustrating how close the Blue Jays came to falling short before Kirk's heroics. The game pressed into extras with both clubs converting on the automatic runner, and in the bottom of the eleventh, Ernie Clement punched a single off Luis Medina to end it, a hit worth 35.9 points of win probability.
By the model's accounting, Andrés Giménez was Toronto's most impactful offensive contributor on the night, finishing with a combined WPA of plus-66.6 and a RE24 of plus-2.5, driven largely by his walk-off single off Scott Barlow in the tenth that added 45.5 points to Toronto's win probability on its own. Kirk's clutch home run gave him a plus-39.5 WPA on the night, while Langeliers, despite playing for the losing side, registered a plus-37.5 WPA and led all batters with a RE24 of plus-2.9. Among Toronto's pitchers, Braydon Fisher posted the strongest outing by win-probability contribution at plus-15.8, with Jeffrey Springs adding plus-10.2 in support of a bullpen that ultimately survived long enough to let the offense finish the job.