Game #27 Preview: McGee vs Gausman

The Blue Jays exorcised their Wild Card demons last night in winning their first matchup against the Mariners back at Rogers Centre. They’ll go for the series win this afternoon, as well as their sixth win in a row overall, starting at 3:07 ET.

Blue Jays’ Starter

Kevin Gausman heads to the mound for his sixth start of the season, looking to continue a very strong start to his season. Through 31.2 innings, he is 2-2 with a 2.84 ERA. His 2.88 FIP backs up that great ERA, thanks to a fantastic 41:5 K:BB ratio. That ratio is the 7th best among all qualified pitchers in baseball, and compared to his incredible start last year in those stats, he hasn’t felt quite as dominating.

Interestingly, through his first five starts last year, he also threw 31.2 innings with 41 strikeouts. But the difference between this year and last is that he didn’t surrender a walk or a home run in that stretch, which is where the difference in dominance feeling is coming from. He’s still doing great to start this season though, even when you consider that he has allowed a 7 run inning this season. To have that bad of an inning and still have a sub-3.00 ERA is quite impressive.

Mariners’ Starter

Chris Flexen was originally slated to start for the Mariners, making his fifth start and sixth appearance overall. He didn’t start the season with a rotation gig locked down, but he found his way into the rotation when Robbie Ray and Marco Gonzales each ended up missing early season starts. There were whispers that he may be taken back out of the rotation after his last outing, but even with the news that Ray is done for the season, Flexen’s rotation has disappeared.

Easton McGee has just been called up and will be starting the game for the Mariners. This will be just the second Major League appearance for the 25 year old righty. He had 5 starts in AAA already this season, pitching 28.2 innings to a 3.14 ERA. He has never been one to get many strikeouts as Minor Leaguer, finding success by being in the zone and limiting hard contact. He allowed just 95 walks and 59 home runs in 485.1 career Minor League innings.

Blue Jays’ Lineup

Mariners’ Lineup

esterday’s Heroes

Robbie Grossman went 3-4 with a home run and 2 doubles, driving in 2 runs to take home the Monster Bat award on a bit of a quiet night across the league with the bats. Grossman’s strong game was enough for the Rangers though, as they beat the visiting Yankees 5-2.

Aaron Nola threw 8 dominant innings, allowing just 1 run on 3 hits and nothing else while striking out 6. He gets the Pitcher of the Day award as he picked up the win for the Phillies in the first game of the World Series grudge match, beating the Astros 3-1. And since it was a tight game and he pitched so long, he racked up enough WPA to take home the WPA King trophy with a .425 mark.

Find the Link

Find the link between Chris Flexen and Manuel Margot.

Stats retrieved from Fangraphs and Baseball Savant