Latos and Lawrence to make weekend starts

Joel Sherman tells us that Mat Latos and Casey Lawrence will be making the starts for the Blue Jays on Friday and Saturday, against the Angels, in place of the injured Aaron Sanchez and J.A. Happ.

The Angels have a right-handed heavy lineup, with Mike Trout (presuming he isn’t the PTBNL in the Juan Graterol trade) and Albert Pujols in the middle of the lineup, so the Jays are staying away from T.J. House and Brett Oberholtzer.

Latos has made 2 starts for the Bisons, totaling 9 innings, 8 hits, 1 earned, 3 walks and 10 strikeouts. He’s got the most MLB experience of the players on the Bisons roster. He had a rough spring training, but he should throw strikes for us.

Lawrence has already been up with the Jays this year. He made a couple of appearances for us last week, pitching 2 innings, allowing 3 earned, 3 hits, 5 walks (2 of those walks were intentional) with 2 strikeouts. He’s made 2 starts for the Bisons, throwing 5 innings (he was taken out of his last start early to keep him fresh for his weekend start), giving up 4 hits, 1 earned, no walks with 7 strikeouts.

We can hope that Sanchez and Happ will only miss a couple of starts each, but I am curious to see how Latos and Lawrence preform. It isn’t like things could get much worse this season.