Goodbye Cleveland!
The Jays hope to escape this four game series (1) without getting swept; and (2) still maintaining a winning record. To do that, they will need to win today's game, which pits loss-following specialist Shaun Marcum against Justin Masterson, he of the 1.62 WHIP and 5.21 ERA (though his peripherals suggest he has actually been decent and been victimized by porous defense and/or poor luck - his K numbers are solid, his walk numbers are high but not absurdly so, and he has induced a ton of groundballs, only to have an unusual share of them go for hits (.349 BABIP against) and to have an unusual share of runners on base end up scoring (35% of them). With the Jays tepid hitting thusfar this series (and this month), let's not expect an offensive outburst to be necessarily in the cards.
Marcum has simply been masterful in his return from ligament replacement surgery. His record sits at 7-3 with a 3.14 ERA, a 1.13 Whip, and an outstanding 81/24 K/BB ratio over 103 1/3 innings. One might expect a pitcher with Marcum's flyball tendencies to be giving up slightly more long balls, but other than that there's nothing particularly lucky about his performance thusfar - just good pitching all around coupled with an exceptional changeup that has been his money pitch since he broke into the bigs (almost 26 runs above average with the change over his career).
Lineup-wise, Nick Green is the starting shortstop today, while Jose Molina gets the start behind the dish. Bautista moves to third base and Dewayne Wise plays right field. Why did we demote Encarnacion again? This lineup is copious amounts of ouch, not that Cleveland's is anything to write home about.
Today's title comes from the great Smiths' song of the same name. Please, Please, Please don't let us get swept by the Indians.