MLB Baseball Betting: Toronto Blue Jays at Tampa Bay Rays

The Tampa Bay Rays are one game away from completing a weekend sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays. After losing the opening game 8-3 on Friday the Jays did it again on Saturday. This time they went down 7-1 in the bottom of the 7th and were unable to finish the comeback scoring four runs in the top of the ninth for a 7-5 final score. The Boston Red Sox are leading Oakland 6-0 in the top of the third so there’s a better than average chance that the AL East race will be tied at the close of action tonight. Baltimore is also on the verge of beating the New York Yankees so they could also gain some ground on Toronto.

This is not the situation that Toronto wanted to be in heading into the next week of action which could be crucial for their bid to win the AL East. They play a three game series at Yankee Stadium against New York starting on Monday and they return home to host the Boston Red Sox in a three game weekend set. Toronto had been in decent form until this series and it’s not like they haven’t done this before–they lost 2 of 3 to the AL West bottom feeder LA Angels just a couple of weeks ago.

So the Jays will try to avoid the sweep and we get to play them at a reasonable price. Toronto will start J.A. Happ who followed up his 10 game winning streak with two losses. He didn’t pitch badly in his 8/30 loss at Baltimore (6 1/3 innings pitched, 3 ER, 6 hits with 2 HR) but he’s clearly in ‘letdown mode’ following his epic run of earlier this year. The Jays have won 19 of his 26 starts including 8 of 13 on the road though they have dropped 2 of his last 3. Tampa Bay will counter with Chris Archer who has looked good of late. In his last three starts Archer has a 1.86 ERA, a 0.931 WHIP and the Jays went 2-1 in that stretch. He’s been solid at home all year with a 2.61 ERA but that didn’t help his team much as they managed to lose 10 of his 14 home starts despite Archer’s pitching.

Toronto needs the win and clobbers RHP. Tampa Bay isn’t bad against left handers and we respect Archer’s form but this game is much more important to Toronto.

BET TORONTO BLUE JAYS -105 OVER TAMPA BAY RAYS