Young Eyes: Picks Jays in slugfest in finale
Young Eyes has the Blue Jays winning on Wednesday in a slugfest and the New York Mets splitting their series against the Baltimore Orioles at Citi Field.
In this new series, Weekly Forecast, I look to the week ahead in Major League Baseball, through a Game of the Week pick and a Series of the Week pick.
All stats are as of Sunday, May 3rd.
Game of the Week: Wednesday (12-14) Toronto Blue Jays (Mark Buehrle, 3-2, 6.75 ERA) vs. (15-9) New York Yankees (C.C. Sabathia, 0-4, 5.40 ERA)
You, at first, may look at this matchup as an odd one. One that may produce a lot of hitting. That’s exactly what I was going for. The fact that both pitchers are struggling so far this year combined with the large homerun totals vs. each pitcher (The Yanks have hit nine homers against Buehrle, Jays with three off Sabathia) as well as a great divisional rival matchup makes this my pick for GOTW.
So far this year, the Yankees, as a team in the regular season, are tied for fourth in homeruns, tied for seventh in runs scored and eighth in slugging %, while the Blue Jays are first in runs scored, first in RBIs and seventh in homeruns. If these patterns stay the same, it should turn out to be a huge hitting game.
My pick: Yanks pile on homers vs. Buehrle, but the Jays pull out a win in a high-scoring game.
Record (1-0): Jeff Samardzija beat Corey Kluber.
Series of the Week: (16-10) New York Mets vs. (12-11) Baltimore Orioles, Tuesday-Wednesday.
The interleague matchup takes my SOTW this week as the O’s storm into the Big Apple looking to battle the white-hot pitching of the Mets in this short two-game set. The Orioles will face off against big Bartolo Colon as well as 2014 NL Rookie of the Year Jacob deGrom as the O’s will counter with Miguel Gonzalez and a stuggling (12.18 ERA) Bud Norris.
The O’s try to keep up the hot bats as they have hit .301 with six homers and 34 RBIs in the past four games.
My pick: Short series finds split, O’s win one behind the bats.
Record (1-0): Cards over Nationals.