Minnesota @ Toronto preview
Rogers Centre
Last Meeting ( Jul 6, 2010 ) Minnesota 7, Toronto 6
Mark Rzepczynski finds himself in a tough position Wednesday, making his 2010 major league debut in place of his team's best pitcher.
Rzepczynski returns to the big leagues as he leads the Toronto Blue Jays into the middle game of a three-game series at the Rogers Centre against the Minnesota Twins. The visitors earned a hard-fought 7-6 win over Toronto in the series opener behind an eighth-inning go-ahead single by Denard Span.
The disheartening loss extended the Jays' misery, handing them their 12th loss in the last 15 games while dropping them two games below the .500 mark for the first time since late April.
Even more discouraging is the fact that Toronto found itself just 3 1/2 games back of the lead in the American League East at the end of May, but now sits a full 10 games behind the division-leading New York Yankees.
Making matters worse is an arm injury to ace starter Shaun Marcum, suffered in his previous start six days ago. Marcum was enjoying a solid comeback season in his return from a serious elbow injury, boasting a 7-4 record with a 3.44 ERA and 88 strikeouts over 107 1/3 innings this season.
His replacement for today's game will be Rzepczynski, who showed promise in a brief major league stint last season. The 24-year-old left-hander went 2-4 with a 3.67 ERA in 11 starts and showed some good stuff overall, striking out 60 in just 61 1/3 innings.
He was in contention for one of the team's starting spots in spring training but suffered a broken left middle finger and wound up missing the start of the season. At Triple-A Las Vegas, he went 4-3 with a 6.66 ERA but had won each of his previous three starts prior to the promotion.
He'll try to turn things around for the Blue Jays, who have showed some offensive spark in recent games - scoring 15 runs over their last three contests - but haven't been getting the pitching to match.
Toronto starters have coughed up 18 runs over their last 14 combined innings, contributing to the team's latest three-game slide. The last two games have each been 7-6 defeats.
The Twins counter with finesse right-hander Kevin Slowey (8-5), who has beaten Toronto once already this season. The 26-year-old is coming off one of his strongest outings of the season, tossing six innings of one-run, four-hit ball to earn a 5-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers.
Slowey hasn't enjoyed much success against the Blue Jays overall, going 1-2 for his career with a 6.08 ERA over 26 2/3 innings. Slowey has surrendered 10 or more hits just five times in his career, but two of those performances have come against Toronto.