MLB Baseball Betting: Tampa Bay Rays at Toronto Blue Jays

The Toronto Blue Jays scrapped out a hard fought win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday. Toronto scored two in the bottom of the sixth to take a 2-0 lead which they promptly gave up as Tampa Bay scored twice in the top of the 7th to tie the game. The hero for Toronto was pinch hitter Ezequiel Carrera who hit a solo home run in the 8th inning to win the game for the Jays. They needed a win and got one but that doesn’t negate the fact that Toronto has been scuffling in the month of September. The victory on Monday improved Toronto’s record for the month to 3-7 -6.6 units.

As far as the AL East race is concerned, the Boston Red Sox are still in first place with a 2 game advantage over the Blue Jays. Boston shredded the Baltimore Orioles 12-2 which dropped the O’s into third place a game behind Toronto and 3 games back of Boston. The Yankees were routed by the Los Angeles Dodgers dropping them 5 games out of first. Toronto is in the top wild card spot in the American League leading second wildcard team Baltimore by 1 game. Things get crowded after that with five teams within 3.5 games of the Orioles. All told that’s 7 teams separated by a combined 5 games vying for 2 wild card spots. Making this situation all the more dire for Toronto–they’ve got the worst L10 game record of the 7 teams in wild card contention.

Tampa will start lefthander Drew Smyly which isn’t good news for Toronto due to their year long struggle against left handed pitching. The Jays are 21-19 -5 units against LHP and average 4.3 runs per game against southpaws compared to 5.1 runs per game against right handers. Smyly has been in less than mediocre form this year with a 5.05 ERA overall but apropos of the Jays’ poor performance against LHP he’s pitched well against Toronto. In three starts against the Jays this year he’s gone 17 innings allowing 12 hits, 5 earned runs and racking up 16 strikeouts against 8 walks. Tampa won two of these games. Toronto will go with right hander Marcus Stroman who has also put up mediocre numbers this year. We’ll take the price with the road team.

BET TAMPA BAY RAYS +180 OVER TORONTO BLUE JAYS