The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles 8-1 on Sunday afternoon at Rogers Centre to pull back to .500 at 75-75.

With 12 games remaining in the regular season, the Blue Jays are just one game back of the Cleveland Guardians for the final wild card spot in the American League. Fangraphs has their playoff odds at greater than 40 percent.

The offense was the story of the win on Sunday, as George Springer (15), Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (9) and Kazuma Okamoto (32) all hit homers. For Guerrero, it was his first homer of the season inside his home ballpark.

On the pitching side of things, Dylan Cease wasn't at his best, but he was still good enough to get the win. After five innings of one-run ball, Cease is now 11-5 with a 2.38 ERA. While Cam Schlittler of the New York Yankees is the favorite for the American League Cy Young Award, Cease is likely the No. 2 choice right now.

His control eluded him somewhat in this game, as he walked five. But he still had his trademark strikeout stuff, fanning nine.

For the season, the 30-year-old has 236 strikeouts in 166.1 innings. He leads the American League in K's and he's positioned himself well in team history for a single season as well.

As noted by StatsCentre, Cease's 236 strikeouts are now the fifth-most in team history for a season, trailing only Roger Clemens (292 in 1997 and 271 in 1998), Robbie Ray (248 in 2021) and Kevin Gausman (237 in 2023).

Clemens won the Cy Young Award in both of those seasons, and Ray did as well.

With 12 games left in the regular season, it seems likely that Cease will get two more regular season starts. With that, it seems reasonable that he can pass both Gausman and Ray to put himself only behind Clemens.

Of course, if the Blue Jays are in a position to make the playoffs and already have something locked up, they could elect to hold Cease back for Game 1 of a wild card series.

However, with the way this season has gone? Having any sort of comfort doesn't seem likely, so Cease will probably need to make both of those starts.

The Blue Jays will kick off a new series with the Detroit Tigers on Monday night at Rogers Centre. First pitch is set for 7:07 p.m. ET as Soriano pitches against the electric young right-hander Troy Melton.

Soriano is 12-7 with a 3.48 ERA between the Los Angeles Angels and Blue Jays. Melton is 8-4 with a 2.42 ERA in his first full season as a starter. He has a fastball in the upper-90s.