MLB Baseball Betting: Tampa Bay Rays at Toronto Blue Jays

Is it hockey season yet? That’s what the sports fans of Toronto are likely asking having watched the erratic Blue Jays over the past couple of weeks. Canada’s baseball team is still in the postseason hunt and still just two games out of first place thanks to a Tuesday loss by the Boston Red Sox. That’s the good news–the bad news is that after a loss to the Rays on Tuesday they’re 3-8 -8.4 units in the month of September.

For whatever reason, you can draw the line of where things started to go downhill for Toronto on September 1. On August 31, Toronto had just wrapped up a three game series against the Baltimore Orioles where they’d won 2 of 3. They were idle on September 1 and began a three game series at Tampa Bay on September 2. Here’s what they’ve done since then:

–lost 2 of 3 at Tampa Bay
–swept at New York Yankees
–lost 2 of 3 to Boston Red Sox

And now they’ve split the first two games against the Tampa Bay Rays at the Rogers Centre. The Rays for the year are 26-43 -15.1 units on the road and 29-53 -25 units against opponents with winning records. They’re 20 games out of first place after Tuesday’s win but for whatever reason they’ve given Toronto fits. The teams have played 18 times in 2016 with Tampa Bay winning 10. They’ve played 8 times at the Rogers Centre with Tampa Bay winning 5. If the Jays don’t make the playoffs this year they’ll likely be able to blame a mediocre showing against opponents with losing records. For the year, they’re 29-25 -7.3 units against teams under .500.

The Rays will start right hander Alex Cobb making his third start since missing over a year due to Tommy John surgery. In theory, it’s a good matchup for Toronto but their offense has sputtered over the past week meaning that’s not a given. The Jays will counter with right hander Marco Estrada who has also been in substandard form of late. Toronto ‘needs’ this win but they’ve ‘needed’ just about every game in September and it really hasn’t mattered. Just no interest in laying a -200 chalk price with this underachieving Blue Jays team until they show a bit more urgency–particularly against ‘bottom feeders’.

BET TAMPA BAY RAYS +175 OVER TORONTO BLUE JAYS