Blue Jays (10-9) vs Padres (11-10)
After a very strong home stand, the Blue Jays hit the road again, heading to San Diego for the first time since 2013 to take on the Padres. It’s a west coast game, so be prepared for late evening baseball with the game set to start at 9:40 ET.
Blue Jays’ Starter
Yariel Rodríguez will make his second Major League start, looking to follow up on what was a pretty impressive debut. Limited to just 3.2 innings as he is not stretched out, Rodríguez faced 16 batters, surrendering 1 run on 4 hits. He walked 2, struck out 6 and gave up a solo home run.
Since Rodríguez is likely limited to four innings or so if things are going well, the Jays are likely to follow him with Bowden Francis for a few innings as well. Francis isn’t doing well this season, and is on the verge of losing his roster spot. After a great debut last fall and convincing spring training, Francis earned himself a spot in the rotation to open the season. Through 10.2 innings thus far, he was an 11.81 ERA with 4 home runs and 7 walks. He has struck out 15, so there has been some good in his numbers, but not enough.
Padres’ Starter
The Padres will send out rookie right hander Matt Waldron. The 27 year old has put up strong numbers thus far, coming into play with a 3.14 ERA over 14.1 innings. He has a nearly identical 3.13 FIP, thanks to 16 strikeouts vs 6 walks, and more impressively just 1 home run allowed. As a flyball pitcher, he’s probably going to allow home runs at a higher rate than he currently is, but facing the Jays probably won’t be the reason his home run rate goes up.
Blue Jays’ Lineup
There has been just one Blue Jay to hit a home run since last Saturday, and that has been Daulton Varsho. Somehow the Jays managed a 4 game win streak in that span, and almost pushed it to 5 games yesterday, so the lack of power wasn’t necessarily hurting them. But despite what Don Mattingly says, the Jays do need to hit home runs and this current outage is not a good sign.
Expect to see Danny Jansen back behind the plate today, making his second start since coming back from injury. He didn’t pick up a hit in his first game, but outside of the two strikeouts and a walk, he did hit the ball harder than any other Blue Jay catcher has is his fly out.
Kevin Kiermaier put together a perfect day at the plate on Wednesday, collecting 3 hits and a walk to lift his average up to .200 on the season and his wRC+ up to 48. He has probably bought himself a bit more time in the lineup with that strong day, and hopefully it’s a sign of him turning the corner of a very rough start to his season. The next step is to find some power and start hitting some doubles.
Padres’ Lineup
The Padres come into battle today with a pretty much entirely healthy position player contingent. Jake Cronenworth missed the games on Tuesday and Wednesday with a sore calf. He was day to day at that time, and the Padres didn’t expect him to end up on the IL. But he’s the only regular position player that appears to be a threat to miss the game tonight.
As a team, the Padres bats are doing quite well. They’re hitting .258/.333/.418 (114 wRC+), and have scored 5.19 runs per game, the 8th best mark in baseball. They don’t strike out much, as their 19.0% strikeout rate is 4th best in baseball. And they’ve got a good power-steal balance with the third most home runs (24) and 10th most steals (15) in all of baseball.
The big names in this lineup are Fernando Tatis Jr, Manny Machado, Ha-Seong Kim and Xander Bogaerts, with only Bogaerts struggling in the early season. In CF, 21 year old Jackson Merrill has gotten off to a great start to his career, hitting .333/.405/.439 (141 wRC+) with +1 OAA on defense. And Jurickson Profar is having a very strong season back in San Diego, hitting .299/.405/.478 (153 wRC+) over 80 PA thus far.
Yesterday’s Heroes
It was a pretty quiet day across baseball yesterday with just 4 games on the go. Marcus Semien went 3-6 with a home run and a double, so we’ll call that good enough for the Monster Bat award. He led his Rangers to the 9-7 win over the Tigers.
Logan Webb threw 7 masterful innings, holding the Diamondbacks to just 2 hits and a walk while striking out 5 to pick up the Pitcher of the Day award and the win in the Giants’ 5-0 shutout victory. Webb also gets the WPA King trophy for pitching so well in a close game, finishing up with a .455 mark on the day.
Find the Link
Find the link between Jurickson Profar and Seth Johnson (at least I’m like 82% sure).