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The Blue Jays will look to put up back to back wins over the Royals in game 2 of 3 in Kansas City in the shadows of tomorrow’s trade deadline. Gametime is set for 8:15 ET.
Blue Jays’ Starter
Young righty Sean Reid-Foley will be making his 3rd start and 5th overall appearance at the big league level, after also putting up 17 starts and a relief appearance down in Buffalo. In 12.2 Major League innings, Reid-Foley is 0-1 with a 3.55 ERA, filling up the stat sheet with a lot of strikeouts, walks and home runs. He has always been able to rack up the strikeouts, notching 647 in 578.1 career Minor League innings. But it has been the ever present walks that have sapped the value of those strikeouts, as his 2.3 K/BB ratio across the Minors can attest to.
One of Reid-Foley’s starts this year actually came against Kansas City about a month ago. He allowed 2 runs on 5 hits over 5.1 innings, striking out just 3 but also limiting the walks to just 1. Martin Maldonado, who has since been moved to the Cubs for today’s opponent, had a home run in that game.
Royals’ Starter
The Royals will send out Mike Montgomery, the veteran left hander who recently made his way here from the Cubs in the aforementioned trade. After working out of the bullpen in Chicago for 20 games to poor results, he has been moved to the rotation for the Royals and is finding even poorer results. On the whole, over 34 innings, he is 1-3 with a 6.07 ERA. He has just 19 strikeouts against 14 walks, and has surrendered 8 home runs. It has been a tough season, far off from his 3.78 ERA.
He did, however, have a pretty good outing his last time out. Both of his starts with the Royals have been against Cleveland, and after getting shelled the first time, he held them to 1 run on 5 hits over 5 innings, as he continues to ramp up his workload. He didn’t notch a strikeout in that game, but otherwise looked like things were starting to turn around for him.
Blue Jays’ Lineup
With Freddy Galvis nursing a sore back, teams will likely not have much trade interest in him. But if he’s able to be out there this evening, I’m sure the Jays will try to showcase that he’s healthy, and he’ll be out at second base if he can handle it.
Bo Bichette, fresh off his first career hit in his first career plate appearance, will be back out at SS.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who appears to have just been given a day of rest last night, should be back out there today.
I would imagine that Danny Jansen catches today while Reese McGuire goes tomorrow, as the Jays maybe try to work the platoon advantage a bit.
Royals’ Lineup
First baseman Ryan O’Hearn, who didn’t get the start yesterday with Pannone on the mound, will likely be back in there today. He’s hitting just .185/.279/.323 (59 wRC+), with a team low -1.0 WAR in 222 PA. He recently came back from AAA after the Royals DFA’d Lucas Duda, who was somehow doing even worse.
Nicky Lopez, who got the day off against the lefty yesterday as well, will likely be back in there at SS. He has been getting a lot of the starts at SS while Adalberto Mondesi is on the IL.
Billy Hamilton doesn’t seem to get many starts, so seeing him on back to back days doesn’t seem likely. Look for Bubba Starling to be back in CF as Jorge Soler slides back into RF.
Yesterday’s Heroes
There was a very light schedule around the league last night, but still enough to have a player put up a solid effort and earn the Monster Bat award. Eric Hosmer cracked a pair of home runs, driving in 5 runs as his Padres beat the Orioles 8-1.
Jon Gray threw 8 innings of 1 run ball yesterday, allowing 3 hits and 3 walks while striking out 6. It was enough to earn both the Pitcher of the Day award and the WPA King award, as the competition was really light for the latter. He notched just a .354 WPA in the Rockies’ 9-1 win over the Dodgers, narrowly edging Randal Grichuk’s runner up mark of .336.
Find the Link
Find the link between Montgomery and Madison Bumgarner (the term “Golden Pitch” is not the answer).