Addison Barger hit a two-run home run, Bo Bichette had a go-ahead two-run single in the fifth inning and the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Minnesota Twins 6-4 on Friday night at Target Field for their fifth straight victory.

Trevor Larnach homered two batters into the first off rookie Paxton Schultz to give the Twins the lead and tie him for the team lead with 10. Kody Clemens had a run-scoring ground out, and Christian Vázquez hit a two-out RBI double to make it 3-0 in the second.

Bailey Ober hit Vladimir Guerrero Jr. with a pitch to begin the fourth and then gave up his first hit when Barger homered to right field to get Toronto to 3-2.

Five of Barger’s seven homers have come in his last seven games.

Ernie Clement singled leading off the fifth, and Andrés Giménez doubled before Bichette blooped a single to center for a 4-3 lead.

George Springer hit his ninth home run — a solo shot off Ober to make it 5-3 in the sixth.

Guerrero doubled leading off the eighth and scored on Alejandro Kirk’s single for a 6-3 lead.

Ober (4-2) retired the first eight Blue Jays before walking Andrés Giménez on a full count. He allowed five runs and five hits in seven innings.

Eric Lauer (2-1) replaced Schultz to begin the third and allowed a hit in 2 1/3 scoreless innings to get the win. Fluharty and Yariel Rodríguez both got four outs, and Jeff Hoffman pitched the ninth for his 14th save in 17 opportunities.

Royce Lewis went 3 for 3 for Minnesota, which was coming off a 5-5 road trip.

Key moment

Lewis had a two-out RBI single in the home eighth off Brendan Little to get the Twins within two runs, but Little left the tying runs stranded when Clemens grounded out.

Key stat

Toronto is 236-193 all time against Minnesota, but the Twins have won the season series in six of the past seven years.

Up next

Blue Jays RHP Kevin Gausman (5-4, 3.82 ERA) starts Saturday against Twins RHP Chris Paddack (2-5, 3.58).

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Twins pull away from Athletics for third straight win

A federal judge signed off on arguably the biggest change in the history of college sports Friday, clearing the way for schools to begin paying their athletes millions of dollars as soon as next month as the multibillion-dollar industry shreds the last vestiges of the amateur model that defined it for more than a century.

Nearly five years after Arizona State swimmer Grant House sued the NCAA and its five biggest conferences to lift restrictions on revenue sharing, U.S. Judge Claudia Wilken approved the final proposal that had been hung up on roster limits, just one of many changes ahead amid concerns that thousands of walk-on athletes will lose their chance to play college sports.

The sweeping terms of the so-called House settlement include approval for each school to share up to $20.5 million with athletes over the next year and $2.7 billion that will be paid over the next decade to thousands of former players who were barred from that revenue for years.

The agreement brings a seismic shift to hundreds of schools that were forced to reckon with the reality that their players are the ones producing the billions in TV and other revenue, mostly through football and basketball, that keep this machine humming.

The scope of the changes — some have already begun — is difficult to overstate. The professionalization of college athletics will be seen in the high-stakes and expensive recruitment of stars on their way to the NFL and NBA, and they will be felt by athletes whose schools have decided to pare their programs. The agreement will resonate in nearly every one of the NCAA’s 1,100 member schools boasting nearly 500,000 athletes.

The road to a settlement

Wilken’s ruling comes 11 years after she dealt the first significant blow to the NCAA ideal of amateurism when she ruled in favor of former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon and others who were seeking a way to earn money from the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL) — a term that is now as common in college sports as “March Madness” or “Roll Tide.” It was just four years ago that the NCAA cleared the way for NIL money to start flowing, but the changes coming are even bigger.

Wilken granted preliminary approval to the settlement last October. That sent colleges scurrying to determine not only how they were going to afford the payments, but how to regulate an industry that also allows players to cut deals with third parties so long as they are deemed compliant by a newly formed enforcement group that will be run by auditors at Deloitte.

The agreement takes a big chunk of oversight away from the NCAA and puts it in the hands of the four biggest conferences. The ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC hold most of the power and decision-making heft, especially when it comes to the College Football Playoff, which is the most significant financial driver in the industry and is not under the NCAA umbrella like the March Madness tournaments are.

Roster limits held things up

The deal looked ready to go since last fall, but Wilken put a halt to it after listening to a number of players who had lost their spots because of newly imposed roster limits being placed on teams.

The limits were part of a trade-off that allowed the schools to offer scholarships to everyone on the roster, instead of only a fraction, as has been the case for decades. Schools started cutting walk-ons in anticipation of the deal being approved.

Wilken asked for a solution and, after weeks, the parties decided to let anyone cut from a roster — now termed a “Designated Student-Athlete” — return to their old school or play for a new one without counting against the new limit.

Wilken ultimately agreed, going point-by-point through the objectors’ arguments to explain why they didn’t hold up.

“The modifications provide Designated Student-Athletes with what they had prior to the roster limits provisions being implemented, which was the opportunity to be on a roster at the discretion of a Division I school,” Wilken wrote.

Winners and losers

The list of winners and losers is long and, in some cases, hard to tease out.

A rough guide of winners would include football and basketball stars at the biggest schools, which will devote much of their bankroll to signing and retaining them. For instance, Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood’s NIL deal is reportedly worth between $10.5 million and $12 million.

Losers, despite Wilken’s ruling, figure to be at least some of the walk-ons and partial scholarship athletes whose spots are gone.

Also in limbo are Olympic sports many of those athletes play and that serve as the main pipeline for a U.S. team that has won the most medals at every Olympics since the downfall of the Soviet Union.

All this is a price worth paying, according to the attorneys who crafted the settlement and argue they delivered exactly what they were asked for: an attempt to put more money in the pockets of the players whose sweat and toil keep people watching from the start of football season through March Madness and the College World Series in June.

What the settlement does not solve is the threat of further litigation.

Though this deal brings some uniformity to the rules, states still have separate laws regarding how NIL can be doled out, which could lead to legal challenges. NCAA President Charlie Baker has been consistent in pushing for federal legislation that would put college sports under one rulebook and, if he has his way, provide some form of antitrust protection to prevent the new model from being disrupted again.

___

AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

St. Cloud Cathedral 7, Hawley 2

Sophomore Kyah Koenig hit a 3-run blast to cap off a five-run third frame that powered the Crusaders (26-2) to their first-ever state softball title in the Class 2A championship game at the University of Minnesota.

Tayla Vought drove in a pair of runs for fourth-seeded St. Cloud Cathedral, while Sadie Meyer scored twice.

Keira Alexander threw a complete game, allowing just one earned run.

Hannah Stotts had two hits, driving in both runs for sixth-seeded Hawley (26-3).

United South Central 2, Badger/Greenbush-Middle River 0

United South Central ace Mariah Anderson threw a complete game, two-hit shutout to lead the top-seeded Rebels (26-1) to the Class A championship, their first in program history.

The junior completed a dominant season by striking out 19 batters to go with zero walks. The two hits for sixth-seeded Badger/Greenbush-Middle River (19-7) both came off the bat of Quinn Vacura.

Kailey Hanson allowed just two hits for the Gators, but the Rebels scored twice in the bottom of a third inning that featured one hit, two walks and two errors.

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Soren Swenson noted he had the majority of shots in his bag a year ago, but they rarely bore fruit.

“I would miss them over and over again,” the Mounds View junior said.

That doesn’t work in tennis, a game highlighting consistency. The truly elite players are the ones who can produce shot after shot, one point after another.

That’s what was required in Friday’s Class 2A individual state final, as Swenson outdueled Wayzata’s Aaron Beduhn 6-2, 6-4 for the state crown in a matchup of the tournament’s top two seeds.

Swenson’s win came two days after he was edged by Beduhn via a third set super tiebreak in the team semifinals on Wayzata’s path to a third consecutive championship.

“What I learned was to just stay really solid and use my forehand to dictate points,” Swenson said.

Solid was the perfect term to describe his play in the final. Swenson largely controlled the first set, and looked to be in cruise control in the second. But Beduhn answered with multiple break points to even the score at 4-4, seemingly shifting momentum.

But Swenson recovered to break Beduhn’s serve to reclaim a 5-4 edge, giving him the chance to serve for the title.

And after going down 30-0 in his service game, Swenson rallied. He did so first with a series of overhead smashes, a shot that can be difficult to capitalize on repeatedly. But the junior did so even with Beduhn returning the first couple.

“I was like 7 for 8 on overheads,” he said, “and it really saved me.”

Some pressure-packed moments can cause players to crumble. But not Swenson. The ability to execute in such moments impressed his older brother, Bjorn, who himself won multiple individual state titles for the Mustangs.

“He handled himself really well,” Bjorn said. “He used the crowd, he celebrated, he did a great job.”

Tied 30-30 in the final game, Swenson blasted an ace at 111 miles per hour to go up 40-30.

“I was just saving it the whole match, just for that serve, just to go get it,” he said.

He won the next point to officially claim the championship, capping a marathon week in which Swenson was tested numerous times, but ultimately came out on top, just as his brother suspected he might at the season’s outset.

Swenson was a state-tournament quality player in past seasons, but not a championship contender. That changed with his offseason work habits.

“He’s waking up every day, lifting, playing tennis multiple times a day. He has worked so hard every day, and it’s really shown with the way he has improved,” Bjorn said. “I always knew (he had it in him). It’s always been in him from a young age in battling on the ping pong court in our basement, I could tell that he’s got what it takes. It’s cool to see his hard work pay off.”

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Between the stage, the environment and the quality of competition, Soren called Friday’s title bout “the best match of my life.”

The rest of which delivered on a family legacy that, frankly, Soren felt no pressure to fulfill.

“Some people definitely (would),” he said. “But, for me, I’m my own player.”

And a really good one, at that.

“I couldn’t be more proud as a brother,” Bjorn said. “It’s an amazing feeling.”

Orono’s duo of Anthony Perrill and Quinn Martini won the doubles title over Wayzata’s Jacob Salisbury and Rishi Ranjith via a 6-2, 7-6 final.

Spartans soar

Two days after winning a fourth straight team title, St. Paul Academy completed a clean sweep of the Class A championships.

One year after falling in the final, St. Paul Academy sophomore Winston Arvidson completed his title quest with a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Rochester Lourdes’ Evan Ritter on Friday.

Arvidson left no doubt throughout his tournament run, dropping just five games total across four matches.

It was an all-St. Paul Academy affair in the doubles bracket, as Isaak Senaratna and Allan Wang bested Spartans teammates Jacob Colton and Ben Macedo 6-3, 6-4 in the championship match.

Senaratna and Wang took third a year ago.