Game #46 Preview: Yarbrough vs Thornton

Happy Victoria Day! The Blue Jays finally bid farewell to the Rays today, while also bidding farewell to TD Ballpark in Dunedin, and I’m not sure which I’m happier to see leave. Hopefully the stay in Buffalo will be as short as the one in Dunedin was for the Jays, and we can be back in a real stadium soon.

Anyway, we’ve got day baseball today because of the holiday, and also because of the holiday I slept in and we’re super close to gametime. So here we go for a 1:07 ET start.

Blue Jays’ Starter

The Jays have decided to give the ball to Trent Thornton to open the game today, and then follow him with Ross Stripling. Neither instills enough confidence that I’m happy here, but it’s what we’ve got for now.

Thornton enters play with a 1-1 record and 2.70 ERA over 23.1 innings. His FIP is fair bit worse at 4.22, and his xERA is even worse at 4.74. In other words, he has been a bit lucky to get where he is at. But his overall numbers out of the bullpen aren’t too far off where he was as a starter in 2019, so he’s at least on familiar ground.

Stripling brings even worse numbers into the game. He’s 0-3 with a 7.20 ERA over 25.0 innings, getting lit up like a Christmas tree so far. He has allowed 36 hits and 7 home runs in his 25 innings. He sits in the bottom 10% across baseball in all of the bad stats, such as hard hit, barrel, expected slugging, etc.

Rays’ Starter

Ryan Yarbrough goes for the Rays, and he is having a typical Yarbrough season. He is 2-3 with a 4.24 ERA. He is limiting walks (1.93 per 9 innings) and home runs (0.96 per 9 innings) and relying on his defense because he can’t strike anyone out (6.75 per 9 innings).

Yarbrough faced the Jays earlier this year as a follower, and dominated. He threw 5.2 shutout innings, allowing just 3 hits and a walk while striking out 6.

Blue Jays’ Lineup

Rays’ Lineup

Yesterday’s Heroes

Fernando Tatis Jr. went 3-3 with a pair of home runs, a single and a walk, and drove in 6 runs to pick up the Monster Bat award. His big day helped his Padres to the 9-2 win over the Mariners.

Carlos Santana hit a walk-off 2-run home run to pick up the WPA King title. He contributed .583 WPA to the Royals’ 3-2 win over the Tigers.

Adam Wainwright threw 8 shutout innings, allowing just a hit and walk, to pick up the Pitcher of the Day award. Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t good enough, as his Cardinal teammates didn’t score, and eventually lost 2-1 to the Cubs in extras.

Find the Link

Find the link between Nate Lowe and Carl Chester.

Stats retrieved from Fangraphs and Baseball Savant