The Toronto Blue Jays have gotten most of their roster back and have played strong baseball over the last few weeks, climbing back into the AL East picture. After a weekend stint against the Yankees, a trip out west to face the Oakland Athletics will be a welcome sight. The A’s, meanwhile, will hope a cross country road trip for the opposition and home field advantage can help them steal a game or two against one of baseball’s hotter teams.
This series will be contested from Monday, June 5, 2017 through Wednesday, June 7, 2017 at O.co Coliseum in Oakland. Monday's clash is being on the MLB Network for those outside the local television markets.
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Pitching Matchups
J.A. Happ will make his second start since coming off the disabled list and will hope to go deeper into the game on Monday.
In his first start off the DL, he lasted only four innings. He’ll have a bit of a longer leash on Monday, though his pitch count is still likely to be below 100 pitches.
Happ blossomed at the end of 2015 and carried that into a strong 2016. Before that he was a serviceable back-end starter, but in the last year and a half, he’s thrown more like a top-of-the-rotation arm. That said, he is 0-3 with a 4.50 ERA this year. His big issue is the long ball. He’s already allowed six in 20 innings. He gave up two in four innings against the Reds in his last start.
The veteran southpaw is 4-0 in his career against Oakland.
Speaking of Oakland, the A’s will counter Happ with a lefty of their own in Sean Manaea. The 25-year old features better ‘stuff’ than Happ, but lacks the experience. This year, he’s 4-3 with a 3.91 ERA and has a 3.87 career ERA in 193 career innings.
Manaea has thrown particularly well in his last three starts, lowering his ERA down from 5.52 prior to those three games. In those three starts, he’s faced Boston, New York and Cleveland—so not a walk in the park. Still, he’s 3-0, giving up three runs in 19 innings, allowing only 12 hits, two walks and striking out 20.
As the series progresses, the trend of experienced, proven Blue Jays’ arm against younger, inexperienced A’s arm will continue.
Tuesday features Marco Estrada against Jharel Cotton. Wednesday, the Jays will send Francisco Liriano to the hill while Andrew Triggs toes the rubber for the A’s.
Estrada is the stable arm in the Jays’ rotation through injuries and uncertainty, but he’s been bad in the first inning this year, averaging close to a run allowed per start in the first inning.
After that, the right-hander settles down and typically delivers a solid performance. His last start wasn’t typical. He couldn’t make it out of the fourth, giving up seven runs to the Yankees. Before that, however, he went at least six in 10 of 11 games. Overall, his ERA is still a very respectable 3.86. It was 3.15 before the blowout loss.
Liriano knows a thing or two about blowout losses. His initial start of the year was the definition of that. He allowed five runs and got just one out. He proceeded to pitch much better through the rest of April, but had back-to-back short stints in May and then sat on the DL the rest of the month. In his first start back, he lasted five innings, allowing two runs to the Yankees.
On the other side, the A’s have Cotton entering the game at 3-6 with a 5.11 ERA. The walks are way up as the stuff is good, but the command is elusive.
After Cotton, the A’s turn to Triggs who has been, arguably, the team ace. He’s 28-years old and only in his second big league season. He’s somewhat of a journeyman already in his young career, but has found a home in Oakland. He had a very solid showing last year and is 5-5 with a 3.36 ERA which is impressive on a team as lousy as Oakland.
Offensive Comparison
The Blue Jays just split a four-game set with the Yankees. They’ll certainly take that considering, the Yankees outscored them in the series by 14-runs. The Jays won a couple close contests, the Yankees won their games in blowouts.
The nature of the losses is cause for concern, but the wins still mean the Jays have won 10 of their last 13 games.
The Jays are still in a pretty strong run and that’s been powered by a combination of factors, but the offense is key.
Since the start of May, Toronto has been a top-5 team in the AL in runs scored, a far cry from where they were at the start of the year. Oakland’s offense, meanwhile, has maintained rather pedestrian.
For the Jays, May was more of a regression to the norm and that should continue to carry over into June. Toronto can expect Devon Travis and Jose Bautista to continue to be factors. Justin Smoak may regress, but Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki are back
For the A’s, Stephen Vogt is hitting .215, Trevor Plouffe is batting .220 and Khris Davis has the best batting average of any of the three outfielders on the roster with at least 150 at bats at .215.
Yonder Alonso and Jed Lowrie are the team’s only real reliable hitters. Khris Davis and Ryon Healy have power, but neither can get on base much more than 30-percent of the time and both are strikeout machines.
Bullpen Breakdown
Having four experienced closers was supposed to give the A’s an edge late in games. The offense was suspect, the rotation a major question, but the bullpen was supposed to close out games they were supposed to win.
Well, as it turns out, only Ryan Madson of the four former closers has been a success. His 1.66 ERA and 0.923 WHIP in 21.2 innings have been great, but the rest, well, not so much.
Sean Doolittle is injured again. John Axford was and now has pitched in just 5.2 innings, surrendering seven runs. Meanwhile, Santiago Casilla has struggled in the closer’s role as his hiccups down the stretch in San Francisco have manifested again across the bay.
The Jays’ bullpen isn’t the best. In fact, he’s probably just about the definition of average, but that’s still good enough to average half a run less per nine innings than the A’s.
Jason Grilli was supposed to be the setup man and he’s struggled, but Roberto Osuna looks good again and the combination of Ryan Tepera, Joe Smith and Aaron Loup bridge the gap well enough.
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