Game #79 Preview: Red Sox @ Blue Jays

The Blue Jays will try to find their bats tonight after yesterday's tough loss to the rival Red Sox. Marco Estrada will take another shot at a no-hitter when he goes up against rookie Eduardo Rodriguez at the Rogers Centre. The lefty Rodriguez was the piece that came back from the Orioles in the Andrew Miller deal last season at the trade deadline. The Venezuelan was strong in the high minors after heading to Boston and was eventually called up earlier this year to help the Red Sox struggling rotation. His first game was 7.2 innings of scoreless pitching, which was followed up by two more extremely impressive outings before our boys in blue rudely tore him apart. On June 14 at the Dome with the same pitching matchup as tonight against Estrada, Rodriguez was tagged for nine runs in just 4.2 innings by the Jays slowing down the raving for the southpaw just a bit.

With six starts now under his belt (four really good and two really bad), Rodriguez has an ERA of 4.33 amid concerns of tipping pitches in his last appearance. All of his numbers look quite solid, so if he can fix some of the issues that have resulted in his two bad outings then he should continue to succeed at the major league level. He features a strict fastball, slider, changeup repertoire with the speed gun reaching the mid-90's on his heater from the left side. For a fairly predictable arsenal, Rodriguez still punches out 22.1% of hitters with his changeup being his best weapon.

Pitchers always look better tearing apart minor league lineups:

Hopeful Lineup

Swoon:

1. Jose Reyes SS
2. Josh Donaldson 3B
3. Jose Bautista RF
4. Edwin Encarnacion DH
5. Danny Valencia LF
6. Russell Martin C
7. Chris Colabello 1B
8. Devon Travis 2B
9. Kevin Pillar CF

Bullpen Usage

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