None of that stopped either side from playing meaningful baseball at Rogers Centre, even with the market leaning hard toward the home team.
Boston came in having dropped 3 straight, a rough finish to a homestand that included a wild controversy the night before — a scoreboard glitch and a rarely invoked fourth-out rule that let a run count despite Toronto turning what looked like a game-ending double play. The Red Sox lost that one too, 2-1, so this was a chance to salvage something from a series that had already gone sideways.
Toronto's lineup absorbed the rotation losses better than Boston's absorbed its own pileup of 60-day IL arms. The Red Sox are already without Garrett Crochet, Tanner Houck, Johan Oviedo and Kutter Crawford, and Tuesday's game leaned on both bullpens more than either team wanted this deep into August.
Toronto broke a 1-1 tie with a 2-run 5th and tacked on single runs in the 6th and 8th to finish it off, 5-3. It's a second straight win over Boston and the kind of result that keeps the Blue Jays within shouting distance of relevance even at 57-63, while the Red Sox now carry a 4-game skid into whatever comes next.