MLB Baseball Betting: Toronto Blue Jays at Kansas City Royals

The Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals will play the ‘rubber game’ of their three game weekend series on Sunday. Toronto won the first game of the set on Friday night while the Royals got another solid effort from Danny Duffy in Saturday’s game to take a 4-2 victory. The good news for Toronto is that every other team in the AL East with the exception of the bottom feeding Tampa Bay Rays lost on Saturday. That means that the top of the divisional standings is where we left them on Friday–the Blue Jays and Orioles are tied for first place with the Boston Red Sox 2 games back. The New York Yankees are still technically in contention as well but they’ve lost 7 of 10 and trail the top teams by 7.5 games.

Toronto will start right hander Marcus Stroman who has been decidedly mediocre all year but has been very sharp in his most recent starts. Stroman has a 4.74 ERA and a 1.293 WHIP for the season with a 4.46 ERA and a 1.287 WHIP on the road. The Jays have gone 11-11 in his 22 starts this season including 5-6 away from the Rogers Centre. In his last three starts, he’s got a 2.49 ERA with a 0.923 WHIP averaging 7.2 innings per starts with 26 strikeouts and just 2 walks. The Blue Jays have won 2 of his last 3 assignments.

Kansas City will counter with Yordano Ventura who is 4.83 ERA and 1.383 WHIP for the season with a 4.73 ERA and a 1.294 WHIP at home. The Royals are 10-11 in his 21 starts overall with a 6-3 mark in his 9 home starts. They’ve lost 2 of his last 3 games with Ventura putting up a 4.00 ERA and a 1.222 WHIP. He’ll likely face a much ruder welcome than lefthander Duffy did on Saturday–the Jays have pounded right handed pitching all season with a 48-31 +8.7 unit record hitting .254 and averaging 5.2 runs per game.

Even with Saturday’s win the reality is that the Royals have been in dismal form and are 4-11 in their last 15 games. Toronto is the better team and should be able to take Saturday’s series finale before heading home to face Tampa Bay on Monday and Houston next weekend.

BET TORONTO BLUE JAYS -145 OVER KANSAS CITY ROYALS