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Toronto scores 3.92 runs a game, the second-lowest figure in the major leagues, and the Blue Jays have put twelve on the board in two nights at Citizens Bank Park. That is how a 56-62 club walks into the finale with the series already won. Philadelphia answers with the starter who has struck out 164 hitters in 136.2 innings, against a right-hander eight starts into a comeback season.
Blue Jays vs Phillies
Toronto has scored 463 runs in 118 games this season. Only Seattle has scored fewer. The Blue Jays hit .242 with a .681 team OPS and 114 home runs, and they have been outscored by 58 runs on the year. None of that has mattered since Friday. They took the opener 5-4 and the middle game 7-5, twelve runs in two nights in a ballpark that has not been kind to visiting teams all summer.
Philadelphia is 62-56, second in the National League East behind an Atlanta club that is eight and a half games clear, and the Phillies still occupy a wild card position. They are 31-30 at Citizens Bank Park against 31-26 on the road, which is a strange split for a team with this lineup, and they have lost two in a row. The run differential is minus one. That number has been within a handful of zero for most of the season and it explains why a club with Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper in the same batting order has not run away with anything.
Toronto, for its part, is 7-3 in its last ten and three and a half games out of the final American League wild card. Fifteen games behind Tampa Bay in the division is a lost cause. Three and a half back of a playoff spot in early August is not.
Toronto Blue Jays Philadelphia PhilliesJesus Luzardo has been the most dependable arm in the Philadelphia rotation this season. He is 10-5 with a 3.36 ERA, a 1.16 WHIP and 164 strikeouts against 43 walks across 136.2 innings in 23 starts. The strikeout rate of 10.80 per nine is the highest among Philadelphia starters, and he has surrendered 12 home runs, a modest figure for a left-hander working in this ballpark. Opponents hit .228 against him.
That profile runs directly into the strangest thing about the Toronto lineup. The Blue Jays have struck out 858 times, the fewest of any team in baseball. They put the ball in play more than anyone. They just do not do much damage when they do, which is the tension in this matchup: Luzardo's best weapon is the one thing Toronto is built to avoid.
Shane Bieber is the other half of it, and his season has been a rebuild in public. Eight starts, 37 innings, a 5.11 ERA and a 1.68 WHIP with 28 strikeouts and 20 walks. Opponents are hitting .284. The walk rate is the tell. An arm that once lived on command is still finding it, and he is doing that against a Philadelphia order that has hit 147 home runs.
The Toronto staff has been better than the record suggests, ranking eleventh in the majors with a 4.01 ERA. Philadelphia's ranks nineteenth at 4.20, though the Phillies have struck out 1,153 hitters, more than any other pitching staff in the sport.
Two clubs with nearly identical batting averages and very different shapes. Philadelphia hits 33 more home runs and strikes out 157 more times. Toronto makes contact constantly and turns it into the second-fewest runs in the league. In a one-game sample, the contact team is the one more likely to string something together against a pitcher having an ordinary afternoon, and the power team is the one more likely to win in a single swing.
Blue Jays Keys Phillies KeysPhiladelphia is priced at -223 with Toronto at +207 and the total set at 8.5. Those numbers imply roughly 69.0 percent for the Phillies and 32.6 percent for the Blue Jays before the book's cut is removed. DraftKings has posted the Phillies as short as -229 on the same total, so the two independent reads agree within six cents.
The market is pricing the pitching gap and nothing else. It has not moved for the two games Toronto has already won, and it has not moved for the fact that Philadelphia's home record is worse than its road record. That is a defensible position given the difference between a 3.36 ERA and a 5.11 ERA, but it is worth naming the assumption for what it is.
This is a series that has already gone wrong for the home team, and the finale is the one game Philadelphia set up to win. Luzardo against a lineup that does not slug is the matchup the Phillies would have picked in March.
What complicates it is that Toronto's whole identity works against the way Luzardo generates outs. The Blue Jays are the hardest team in baseball to strike out. If they keep putting balls in play the way they have for two nights, Philadelphia's afternoon comes down to a bullpen inside a staff that ranks nineteenth in ERA. If Luzardo does what he has done for 23 starts, the Phillies avoid the sweep and go into the week still holding a wild card. Both versions are live, and that is a more interesting Sunday than a -223 price suggests.