ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Tropicana Field hosted a postgame concert Saturday night, and it turned out that Tampa Bay second baseman Tim Beckham was the opening act.

Beckham delivered a two-out single in the ninth inning Saturday to drive home the winning runs as the Rays stunned American League East champion Toronto 4-3 for a walk-off win.

The Blue Jays (93-68) fell one game behind Kansas City, a winner earlier in the day, in the race for baseball's best record. The Rays, who entered tied for last place with Boston, inched closer to avoiding its first last-place finish since 2007.

After a terrific performance by Blue Jays starting pitcher Marco Estrada, the Toronto bullpen could not hold on.

Rays designated hitter Grady Sizemore led off the ninth inning with a double off closer Roberto Osuna, who then got third baseman Evan Longoria to pop out to first and struck out shortstop Asdrubel Cabrera.

But Osuna couldn't find the plate, walking right fielder Steven Souza Jr. and first baseman James Loney to load the bases. Beckham ripped a shot between short and third to score Sizemore and Souza Jr. with the winning runs.

"It feels good to celebrate, it felt good to get the hit man," said Beckham. "The past couple of days I hadn't felt like myself at the plate. I just wanted to zero in.

"I had some rough at-bats earlier in the day, and yesterday and the day before, so it feels good to swing at a ball in the zone and for it to find some grass out there."

Beckham said it was a fastball down the middle he drilled for the game-winner.

"He got in trouble and they got the hit to beat us. Pretty obvious wasn't it?" said Royals manager John Gibbons. "The leadoff double, I thought we were out of that, and then Beckham came through with the big hit, so that happens. Osuna will be fine."

The Rays didn't looking like a team with an offensive explosion remaining after falling behind in the sixth inning, when reliever Brandon Gomes hit right fielder Jose Bautista with a pitch, and designated hitter Edwin Encarnacion followed with a two-run blast, his 39th of the season to give the Blue Jays a 3-1 lead.

Estrada, who had a perfect game through the seven innings the last time he faced Tampa Bay in July, dominated the Rays for the third time this season.

After allowing a leadoff homer to left fielder John Jaso and a single to Longoria in the first inning, Estrada retired 17 of the next 18 batters.

"Yeah, I gotta stop doing that," said Estrada, won a career-high 13 games this season. "It's happened a lot lately. I missed the pitch right down the middle and it was crushed ... after that home run I started locating much better, made some really good pitches today, defense was great again.

Cabrera led off the seventh inning with his 15th home run to make it 3-2.

Estrada struck out the next two batters and was relieved. In 6 2/3 innings, he allowed three hits, two runs and struck out nine. In three starts against Tampa Bay this season, Estrada allowed 10 hits in 27 2/3 innings, and the Rays hit .112 against him. Opponents hit only .203 off him this season, tops in the American League.

Coming off one of the worst starts of his professional career, Tampa Bay right-hander Chris Archer badly wanted one more chance to properly cap off his breakout season.

A week after failing to get out of the fourth inning and allowing nine runs and 10 hits to Toronto, Archer redeemed himself with five strong frames.

Archer ran into trouble in the third inning. Second baseman Cliff Pennington and left fielder Ben Revere singled on back-to-back pitches and after a strikeout, Archer allowed a two-strike single to left by Bautista, scoring Pennington.

Archer became the first pitcher in Tampa Bay history with 250 strikeouts in a season when he struck out Ben Revere leading off the game, and with his 34th start also tied David Price (2011) and Scott Kazmir (2007) for the club record.

NOTES: 2B Tim Beckham's heroics gave the Rays their third walk-off win of the season, compared to a club-record 13 walk-off losses. ... LF John Jaso became the 15th Rays player this season to hit at least five homers, tying a major league record. ... 3B Edwin Encarnacion's sixth inning home run off RHP Brandon Gomes, his 39th of the season, gave the trio of Encarncion, Jose Bautista (40) and Josh Donaldson (41) a combined 120 homers this season. That sets a new Toronto record for a trio, topping the 119 hit by Jose Canseco (46), Carlos Delgado (38) and Shawn Green (35) in 1998. ... Is Toronto 3B Josh Donaldson the MVP favorite? Donaldson has 40-plus home runs, 120-plus RBIs and 120-plus runs scored. The last three times a player hit those marks (Albert Pujols in 2009 and Alex Rodriguez in 2005 and 2007) they were handed the MVP award. ... The Rays entered Saturday tied for last place with Boston, but hoping not to finish there. From 1998-2007 when they were known as the Devil Rays, they finished last nine out of 10 seasons, but haven't finished in the cellar since dropping the "Devil" in 2008. With the win, the Rays moved ahead of the Red Sox, who lost to the Indians.