Texas @ Toronto preview
Rogers Centre
Last Meeting ( May 15, 2010 ) Texas 0, Toronto 6
Colby Lewis represents the Texas Rangers’ last chance for a win in Toronto this weekend – but only if his teammates can give him some run support.
Lewis takes another shot at his fourth win of the season today as the Rangers look to avoid a sweep at the hands of the hot-hitting Blue Jays.
The right-hander has allowed just six runs in his previous three starts, but he’s 0-1 over that stretch. That includes a no-decision against Seattle on April 30, when he threw nine innings of shutout ball, striking out 10. Texas went on to win the game 2-0 in 12 innings.
Lewis (3-1) is still enjoying a solid season, his first in the majors since 2007, when he pitched for the Oakland Athletics. The 30-year-old spent the previous two seasons with the Hiroshima Carp of the Japan League before signing with the Rangers in January.
He’ll face a tough task against a Blue Jays team that has punished Texas pitching for 22 runs over the first two games of the series and improved to them 12-4 in their last 16 outings.
Five different Toronto players went deep in the Jays’ series-opening, 16-10 victory Friday night, and Jose Bautista was a one-man show Saturday afternoon, belting two homers in a 6-0 rout. Toronto has a league-high 59 home runs on the season, 10 more than runner-up Boston, and also leads the majors in doubles (100), extra-base hits (162) and slugging percentage (.462).
They may need to increase those totals to make a winner out of Brandon Morrow.
The erratic right-hander was at his worst five days ago, leaving after just 1 2-3 innings in the shortest start of his career. Morrow (2-3) surrendered six runs and issued six walks, turning a 4-2 lead into a 6-4 deficit at Boston. Toronto went on to lose 7-6.
Morrow was finally given a chance to be a full-time starter after coming to the Blue Jays in a trade that sent reliever Brandon League to Seattle. And while he has been electric at times – striking out 46 in just 35 innings – he has had trouble finding the strike zone, leading to an ugly 6.69 ERA.
Control issues have always plagued Morrow, who in his career has held opponents to a .229 batting average but still owns a 4.37 ERA. Should the 25-year-old ever start throwing strikes consistently, he may finally fulfill the promise he showed when the Mariners made him the fifth pick in the 2006 draft.
The Rangers will be happy to leave Toronto, having gone 2-9 against the American League East entering today’s play. They open a seven-game homestand Monday against the rival Los Angeles Angels, while the Blue Jays host a two-game mini-series against the Minnesota Twins before embarking on an eight-game West Coast trip.