Game #32 Preview: Lopez vs Roark

The Blue Jays and Orioles play game 3 of their 4 game wraparound series. After the shutout last night, the Jays will look to take the series win this afternoon. Today’s game is set to get underway at 3:07 EDT.

Blue Jays’ Starter

Tanner Roark will make his 6th start of the season, looking to improve upon his 2-1 record and 4.91 ERA. The 4.91 ERA is certainly higher than he would like to see, but based on his peripherals so far this year, he’s probably a bit fortunate to be where he’s at. His FIP is 6.32, thanks to a really rough 22 innings. He has allowed 5 home runs and 13 walks in those 22 innings, while striking out just 17. He has also been hit hard fairly consistently, hovering around the 30th percentile (just 30% of pitchers are worse) in things like hard hit rate, barrels and expected batting average.

Despite all of those bad numbers, there is still some hope for him against the Orioles. He faced the same Orioles back on August 19, and had one of his best starts of the season. In that start, he allowed 2 runs (just 1 earned) on 9 hits, but only walked 1, didn’t allow a home run and struck out 5 over 5 innings.

Orioles’ Starter

The Orioles will be going with an arm from their bullpen on the mound today, as Jorge Lopez will be making his first start of the season. This isn’t his first start as a big leaguer though, as he has 27 starts against 36 relief appearances across parts of 5 seasons for 3 teams. Over 199 career innings, Lopez is 7-15 with a 6.02 ERA.

Lopez has made 4 relief appearances this season, including his first one with the Royals before being claimed off waivers by the Orioles 3 weeks ago. Since arriving in Baltimore, he has made 3 relief appearances, with the first 2 lasting 4 innings before a 1 inning relief appearance 5 days ago. So it appears he will be able to give the Orioles multiple innings today.

Blue Jays’ Lineup

Orioles’ Lineup

Yesterdays’ Heroes

Anthony Rizzo went 3-5 with a pair of home runs, a double and a pair of walks over the Cubs’ doubleheader. The Cubs and Reds ended up splitting the doubleheader with a Cubs’ 3-0 win and a Reds’ 6-5 win on a walk-off wild pitch (the second of two walk-off wild pitches yesterday).

Nicholas Castellanos was the beneficiary of that wild pitch, scoing the winning run which gave him a lot of WPA. I’m not sure I’d give the WPA to him necessarily, but it was still good enough to help him to the WPA King total of .624 over the 2 games.

J.A. Happ threw a gem yesterday, helping his Yankees end their 7 game losing streak and picking up the Pitcher of the Day award. He threw 7.1 shutout innings against the Mets, allowing 3 hits but no other baserunners, and striking out 5. He didn’t get the win though, as the Yankees were the other team to pick up the win on the walk-off wild pitch, winning 2-1.

Find the Link

Find the link between Jorge Lopez and Lucius Fox.