Boris "Bubs" Malloy
New York Yankees (+210) at Toronto Blue Jays (-240)
The Toronto Blue Jays (64-52, 39-21 Home) will not only be trying to grow their lead in the AL East over the New York Yankees (62-51, 32-31 Away) tonight, they will also be attempting to break a franchise record with their 12th straight win when they host the Bronx Bombers at the Rogers Centre (7:07 PM Eastern).
The Jays’ first 11-game win streak came in 1987 and the team has tied the feat four times since then, including June of this year. Now, to break the nearly 30-year-old record, Toronto will turn to one of the newest Jays as they send David Price (11-4, 2.35 ERA) to the mound.
This will be just Price’s third start in blue, but if it’s anything like the first two, the game is already in the bag. In his first start, Price went eight strong, allowing just one run against the Twins; he followed that up pitching seven shut out innings against a Yankee order that had previously given him issues.
Ivan Nova (4-4, 3.52 ERA) took the loss against Price during the Jays 6-0 win last Saturday and he’ll look for revenge tonight. Like many pitchers before him, Nova couldn’t get out of the sixth inning against this hot Jays order, serving up a grand slam to first baseman Justin Smoak.
Pitching alone won’t win this matchup, though. The Yankees’ bats will need to regain the form they showed in late July when Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira were crushing the ball in the heart of the order. In August, the two have combined for just two home runs and the team has lost six of their last eight games.
Meanwhile, the Jays are proving they don’t have to light up the scoreboard to win anymore, scoring fewer than five runs in four of their last six victories. Toronto’s ability to win ball games in a variety of ways is why they’re on the run that they’re on, and why they’re heavy favorites tonight.
Despite the lack of value in the moneyline, take the Price and the Jays to win big tonight in front of a sold-out crowd at the Rogers Centre.
Pick: Jays (-240).
(Photo Credit: Keith Allison [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.)
