Horwitz, Berrios help Blue Jays win 9-5, knock Braves out of wild-card spot

ATLANTA (AP) — Spencer Horwitz homered twice among his four hits, José Berríos pitched six effective innings and the Toronto Blue Jays beat Atlanta 9-5 on Saturday night to knock the Braves out of the final NL wild-card spot.

With just 20 games left to play, the Braves fell one game behind the Mets with New York’s 4-0 win over Cincinnati.

“We’ve got 20 games left,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “All we’ve got to go is 1-0 right now as we go forward.”

Berríos (15-9) allowed one earned run and five hits to set a career high for wins. He struck out five and walked one.

“Finally I got to 15 (wins),” Berríos said. “The only thing better than winning is winning again. As a team, when we win it’s fun. Every win I am going to celebrate, and it is a great accomplishment for me and for the team, too.”

Horwitz had his second career multi-homer game, opening the scoring with a solo shot in the second inning and then hitting another in the fourth to make it 2-0. He finished 4 for 5 with three RBIs.

Braves starter Spencer Schwellenbach (6-6) gave up six runs — three earned — and 10 hits in five innings. It ended a run of 25 straight games in which Atlanta’s pitching staff allowed three runs or fewer.

It was Schwellenbach’s worst outing in his last 11 starts. The right-hander had averaged allowed under three earned runs a game dating back to the beginning of July.

“It’s a grind,” Schwellenbach said. “I haven’t thrown this many innings in my life. But, I’m doing everything I can to recover and get in the training room and the weight room and do everything I can to come out and pitch each time. Every fifth day you have to go out and compete.”

After Horwitz’s second homer, Ernie Clement and Joey Loperfido had back-to-back RBI doubles to push Toronto’s lead to 4-0 in the fourth. Horwitz had an RBI double and scored on Will Wagner’s grounder to make it 6-0 in the fifth.

“This is another new experience that he (Schwellenbach) is going to learn from,” Snitker said. “He’s creating things to fall back on and learn from in the future. If he keeps throwing strikes, that’s a lot easier to live with.”

The Blue Jays extended their advantage to 9-1 with three runs in the top of the ninth on Nathan Lukes’ RBI single, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s run-scoring fielder’s choice and Wagner’s RBI single.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Jarred Kelenic had an RBI single. The Braves loaded the bases two batters later on Orlando Arcia’s single to center and Luke Williams followed with a two-run double to cut the deficit to 9-4 and chase Blue Jays reliever Luis Frías after just one-third of an inning.

Brandon Little came on and gave up a run-scoring grounder to Michael Harris II and got Travis d’Arnaud on a ground out to end the game.

The Braves fell to 7-37 this season in games they’ve allowed five runs or more.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Braves: INF Whit Merrifield was out of the lineup after fouling a ball off of his foot in Friday night’s game. A CT scan and MRI revealed a fracture in the foot. The initial diagnosis was that he’d be out six to eight weeks, but the timetable for a possible return remains uncertain.

Braves LHP Chris Sale (16-3, 2.46) will close out the three-game series against Blue Jays RHP Yariel Rodríguez (1-6, 4.61) on Sunday.

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