Baseball: Giants storm past Rays for eighth straight win

St. Petersburg, Florida: Brandon Belt homered and Joe Panik hit a tie-breaking RBI single in the eighth as the San Francisco Giants beat the Tampa Bay Rays 5-1 on Sunday for their eighth straight win.

Jake Peavy (3-6) pitched six solid innings to win for the third time in four starts. Belt hit his team-leading 10th homer off Jake Odorizzi and Panik delivered in a key situation for the second straight game with his run-scoring single against Xavier Cedeno (3-2) during San Francisco’s four-run eighth.

Panik is just 2 for 14 through three games of San Francisco’s weeklong road trip, but both hits broke late-inning ties. He hit a three-run homer in the ninth inning of Saturday’s 6-4 win over Tampa Bay, which has lost four straight.

In Chicago, prized prospect Willson Contreras crunched the first pitch he saw in the major leagues for a two-run home run and Kyle Hendricks struck out a career-high 12 in six innings as Chicago completed a sweep of Pittsburgh with a 10-5 win.

Matt Wieters homered and drove in four runs as Baltimore outslugged Toronto 11-6 to provide right-hander Chris Tillman with his ninth straight victory. Baltimore amassed a season-high 19 hits against Marcus Stroman (6-3) and five relievers in the deciding matchup of the three-game series between AL East contenders.

Wieters went 4 for 5 with three doubles. Jonathan Schoop contributed a homer and three RBIs and Chris Davis had three hits and scored three runs.