Oliver Perez pitched eight innings, Moises Alou extended his hitting streak to a team record-tying 26 games and the New York Mets strengthened its hold on the NL East by beating Florida.

Following a brief September swoon, the Mets won their second straight and remained 1½ games in front of Philadelphia. New York’s magic number to clinch division was seven with eight games to play.

Mr. Perez (15-9) gave up six hits, one walk and one earned run while striking out eight. Aaron Heilman completed the seven-hitter.

Six of the Mets’ runs came with two out, and they made the most of their three hits off Byung-Hyun Kim (9-8). He allowed five runs in five innings.

Meanwhile, Melky Cabrera singled home the winning run in the 10th inning for his fifth RBI as the Yankees won a wild one over Toronto.

Mr. Cabrera’s third big hit of the day off Josh Towers (5-10) ended a messy, back-and-forth game that lasted exactly 5 hours — after the start was delayed 92 minutes by rain.

The Yankees used a team-record 10 pitchers and again took advantage of a defensive misplay by Blue Jays second baseman Aaron Hill.

New York remained 2½ games behind first-place Boston in the AL East and improved to 5½ ahead of Detroit in the wild-card race.

Alex Rodriguez had four hits, and Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui had three each.

Jeff Karstens (1-2) pitched a scoreless 10th for the win.<