The Toronto Blue Jays welcome the Los Angeles Angels for the first game in a three-game set on Friday night. Toronto is flying high coming off a four-game sweep of Philadelphia, while the Angels are coming off back-to-back losses to the Yankees.
The Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies continue their four-game set at the Air Canada Centre on Thursday. The Blue Jays will be looking for the rare four-game sweep after taking it to the Phillies in the first three games of this series. Wednesday night’s game saw the Blue Jays come away with a convincing 10-0 win.
The Philadelphia Phillies and Toronto Blue Jays continue their series in the City of Brotherly Love with game two in the set on Tuesday. Toronto won the series opener on Monday night, claiming a 3-0 decision.
The New York Mets will make the trip out to Denver to open a four-game series with the Colorado Rockies on Thursday night. The Rockies return home red hot, having won five games on their six-game road trip, while the Mets also have five wins in their last six games, with a day off on Wednesday after their game in Philadelphia was rained out.
The Rangers just swept Oakland and thus will be heading into Seattle in first place in the AL West with an AL leading 14 victories. Texas is red hot right now having won 8 of 9 starting with the final three of their last set with the Mariners.
Texas Rangers (14-8) vs. Seattle Mariners (8-13)
Friday April 25
Safeco Field – Seattle, WA
10:10PM
Probable Pitchers
TEX: Robbie Ross (L)
SEA: Roenis Elias (L)
Moneyline: Seattle -106, Texas -102
Total: 7.5
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Other than Martin Perez’ current scoreless streak nothing is really standing out with the Rangers right now other than they are doing it without a number of key contributors. Jurickson Profar and Adrian Beltre are on the DL and Shin-Soo Choo is questionable for Friday.
Texas has been getting very good starting pitching and that includes the starts from Robbie Ross, who doesn’t look like he will be returning to the pen anytime soon.
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Ross has a 2.31 ERA in the young season and a big reason are the 7 shutout innings he threw against the Mariners in his lone win on the season.
Only once in 4 starts has he given up more than 2ER and this time will take on Seattle in pitcher friendly Safeco.
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While Texas has been soaring the Mariners have been sinking.
They had lost 8 games in a row before ending their slide with a series closing win against Houston. If they had lost that one it would have been the Mariners not the Astros in last place. However, it is still relatively early and thankfully for Seattle their pitching has been solid.
It is the offense that is the problem. Robinson Cano is hitting below expectations at .280 and others are well off what you would expected. Kyle Seager is batting .179, ouch.
Rookie Roenis Elias has been better than expected this season.
He is giving up a few too many walks but is keeping the balling in the park and not giving up a ton of hits. His lone win on the season was against the Rangers in a game in which he gave up just one run over 6 innings.
It was the deepest he has gone in any start this season – he needs to start giving them some more innings or else they are going to burn out their bullpen.
Both of these starters have had success against their opponents recently. Since we are still writing the book on both I think we can expect a low scoring game. I see no reason to back the home side and given the way both teams are playing the value on Texas is better than expected.
It is the smart play.
Total prediction: Under
Score prediction: Texas 4 – Seattle 3
On the season the A’s have an Over/Under record of 10-11 and a run-line W/L record of 12-9 and the Astros have an Over/Under record of 9-12 and a run-line W/L record of 10-12.
The San Francisco Giants will aim to stay hot when they host the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 2 of a three-game series on Wednesday night in the City by the Bay.
With scoring being down it seems like there are more potential Cy Young winners than ever. Lets take a quick look at the favourite, a contender and a dark horse candidate in each league. There is some good value out there for tying up your money all season.
Boston did not show very well last night in this series opener between first place teams getting shutout on the West Coast. Yesterday they had just two hits off of Ricky Nolasco and things won’t get much easier this afternoon.
Oakland currently sits in the final AL Wild Card position but things are tightly bunched with three teams all within a three and a half games of the A’s.
The Atlanta Braves have the best record in the Majors and should be pumped to face off with a potential playoff opponent in St. Louis.
Except for a couple of runs the Arizona Diamondbacks couldn’t solve Pittsburgh rookie Gerrit Cole in dropping the first game of their series last night.
The Giants and Marlins combined for a week’s worth of offense in their opener Friday night with the Giants winning 14-10. San Francisco cranked out 19 hits with OF Hunter Pence and 3B Pablo Sandoval going a combined 7 for 10 with 8 RBI.
The Cleveland Indians are in the thick of the American League race thats for sure.
New York was showing some signs of life before getting hammered by the Angels in the closing game of their 4 game set on Thursday. Prior to that they had won 4 in a row and 5 of 6 and things are slowly getting to a normal stage with 3B Alex Rodriguez in the lineup – if there is a normal.
A month ago it didn’t look like this series would be all that meaningful…but with Kansas City’s recent strong play they are actually in the conversation as it relates to the American League Central and certainly the Wild Card race.
