Game #54 Preview: King vs Shoemaker

The Blue Jays return home to finish up their 2020 regular season schedule, welcoming the Yankees in for 4 games in the penultimate series of the year. Today’s game gets underway at 6:37 EDT.

Blue Jays’ Starter

Fresh off the Injured List, Matt Shoemaker will make the start today after making a few “rehab” appearances down at the Alternate Site. He’ll be held to about 60 pitches today, which if he’s efficient and effective, should get him 3-4 innings, 5 if he’s really good.

It was a month ago today that Shoemaker last pitched, a 5 inning outing against the Rays in his 5th start of the season, 3 of which came against those Rays. Overall, the results weren’t great, as he was 0-1 with a 4.94 ERA. The walks were a huge problem early, as he allowed 5 over his first 2 games, then just 2 over his last 3 starts. Then it was the home runs that took over, after not allowing any in his first start, to 8 over his final 4. He was at least somewhat consistent getting strikeouts, racking up 25 over his 25.2 innings.

Yankees’ Starter

The Yankees have pushed back their rotation to help set it up for the playoffs, inserting 25 year old rookie Michael King today to bump everone back a day. The right hander has spent a good portion on the active roster for the Yankees, just kinda sitting out there as the last man in the bullpen in case things go wrong, or is needed for a spot start. He has made 8 appearances on the year, with 3 coming as a starter, and generally pitches 3-4 innings in his outings.

The Jays have seen him twice so far this year, his last two appearances. The first was just a 2 out portion of an inning a couple weeks ago, then again last week when he went 2 innings. The Jays’ bats got to him a bit more in that one, scoring 3 runs on 5 hits and 2 walks, striking out just once. He pitched the last 2 innings of the 20-6 game, so I’ll forgive you if you don’t remember him pitching.

Blue Jays’ Lineup

The Blue Jays will be playing their 8th straight right handed starter, which has been making it harder for Montoyo to want to start Jonathan Davis. He was in there yesterday, and Davis managed to come through big with a huge RBI double. With his defense alone, I’d be happy if Davis played every day for the rest of the season, but I know that isn’t going to happen, and I would expect to see him on the bench again today.

Cavan Biggio and Joe Panik were originally slated to be at 2B and 3B, respectively, prior to the game yesterday, but then switched by gametime. I think we’ll end up seeing a lot of Biggio at 3B as we wrap up the season, while Panik fights off Villar for playing time at second.

Yankees’ Lineup

With everyone returning from the Injured List last week, the Yankees’ lineup is at full strength, although with some scheduled breaks to keep them fresh. Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton specifically are set to have scheduled off days going forward, but I don’t think either of them are expected to be out of the lineup today.

While Stanton and Judge are the big names in the lineup, they’ve really been carried this year by DJ LeMahieu and Luke Voit. LeMahieu is currently leading the Majors in batting average at .361, something he also did in 2016 and threatened to do last year. Voit is the Major League leader in home runs at 21, 3 ahead of Jose Abreu, who himself is 2 ahead of a 6 person field that includes Teoscar Hernandez.

Yesterday’s Heroes

Daniel Vogelbach went 2-4, launching a pair of home runs and droving in 5 yesterday to pick up the Monster Bat award. Vogelbach is now 15-36 with 3 home runs in 11 games with the Brewers, and in this one carried them to the 5-3 win over the Royals.

Dylan Moore hit a big game tying home run in the bottom of the 8th to force extra innings, but his Mariners couldn’t hold off the Padres forever. The Padres eventually plated 3 runs in the top of the 11th, a lead that would hold up for the 7-4 win. Moore, for his part, narrowly edges Mitch Moreland for WPA King, taking the win with a .392 mark, .006 ahead of Moreland.

Carlos Carrasco threw 7 shutout innings, allowing just a lone hit and 3 walks to pick up the Pitcher of the Day honours. He struck out 11 batters as Cleveland beat the Tigers 7-4.

Standings Watch

Current seed: 8th (unchanged from yesterday)
Games back of the Yankees for 2nd in East: 4 (-1 from yesterday)
Games back of Cleveland for 7th seed: 2 (unchanged from yesterday)
Games up on 9th: 4 (+1 from yesterday)
Magic Number to clinch a playoff spot: 4 (-2 from yesterday)

Find the Link

Find the link between LeMahieu and Andrew McCutchen.