José Soriano provided the Toronto Blue Jays’ beleaguered pitching staff with a much-needed boost on Wednesday.

He pounded the zone with hard fastballs, keeping the Boston Red Sox at bay until the Blue Jays broke it open with a five-run eighth, en route to a 6-4 win at Rogers Centre. Toronto has now won 11 of its last 16 games, moving to 59-63, two games back of the final American League wild-card spot, pending the results of the Texas Rangers’ game against the Los Angeles Angels. Wednesday’s win also secured a series win over the Red Sox.

Three straight singles from the heart of the order, starting with a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ground ball up the middle, first gave the Blue Jays an edge. Then consecutive walks, a sacrifice fly and Myles Straw’s RBI double further extended the lead. Ernie Clement, the man with the third-lowest walk rate in MLB, drew a free pass with the bases loaded.

Recently acquired knuckleballer Matt Waldron gave up a three-spot in the ninth, necessitating the use of Louis Varland, who came in and locked down his 26th save of the season.

Still, it was Soriano’s quick work against the Red Sox lineup that kept the game level. One of the areas the Blue Jays felt they could help Dylan Cease with, and have, is improving his pitch efficiency so he can go deeper into outings. Soriano can also be effectively wild at times and could benefit from a similar shift, having averaged only five innings over 11 starts since the beginning of June.

Soriano faced the minimum through four innings, allowing one walk and one hit that were erased by a double play and an out on the bases, respectively. After walking Andruw Monasterio in the third, he spammed Nick Sogard with sinkers until he grounded into the double play on the first one he swung at. Three of Soriano’s four strikeouts were on three pitches, and he got batters swinging with all of his pitches except for his knuckle curve — normally his best put-away pitch. Soriano ultimately pitched six innings of one-run ball in his Blue Jays home debut.

Amid predictions that the Blue Jays would alter Soriano’s pitch usage from what it was under the Angels’ apparently primitive pitching department, or that it would stay the same for now and Toronto would wait for its marquee deadline acquisition to settle in first, it leaned towards the former in his first outing against the Philadelphia Phillies last week. Soriano’s knuckle curve usage was up 12%, which is his best pitch by Statcast’s run value (plus-8). His four-seam usage was down 11%. It’s his only pitch in the negatives, and eight of the 13 home runs he’s allowed have been on four-seamers.

However, Wednesday was the opposite. Soriano’s four-seam usage was back up to normal, the curveball was way down, and Willson Contreras hammered one of the few breaking balls Soriano threw into the left-field seats for a solo home run. Contreras fell behind 1-2  on a couple of whiffs but kept grinding until he got a pitch he could handle.

That came after Ernie Clement drove in the Blue Jays’ first run in signature fashion, lining a first-pitch sinker to centre. Kazuma Okamoto came in to score after notching his first extra-base hit in August — a hard-hit double off a Ranger Suarez curveball — in his return to the lineup after missing two games with a left knee contusion. The Blue Jays’ other nine hits were all singles.

Meanwhile, before the game, the Blue Jays announced that they claimed struggling former Arizona Diamondbacks closer Paul Sewald after he was designated for assignment on Monday. The 36-year-old righty had allowed six home runs over his previous nine innings and been ousted from the Diamondbacks’ closer role, but also has a 21.5% strikeout-minus-walk rate that ranks in the 87th percentile among qualified relievers.

Sewald has given up loads of dangerous contact in the air — ranking in the first percentile in both barrel and ground-ball rate. But if he can find a way to keep the ball in the yard, he could be a valuable addition to the Blue Jays’ ailing bullpen that had logged the most innings of any team in August entering play Wednesday.

The Blue Jays will send Max Scherzer to the mound on Thursday looking for the series sweep. The Red Sox will counter with Payton Tolle. First pitch is set for 3:07 p.m EST at Rogers Centre.