August 14, 2020

By Adam Morissette

Baseball Canada

Markham, Ontario native Jordan Romano has literally been unhittable this season in earning a role as one of Blue Jays’ manager Charlie Montoyo’s high-leverage relievers through the team’s first 15 games.

Romano started the campaign with eight hitless innings until allowing a single in Wednesday’s eventual loss to the Miami Marlins in Buffalo.

The 27-year-old has yet to allow an earned run over nine innings pitched and has a tidy 0.44 WHIP to go along with 13 strikeouts.

Another Canadian reliever turning heads is North Vancouver’s Rowan Wick, a member of the MLB leading Chicago Cubs’ bullpen.

After recording two saves during the first three days of August, the Cubs found themselves on the sidelines last weekend as their series against the Cardinals was postponed as the St. Louis club continues to deal with a COVID-19 outbreak within the club.

Wick returned to the mound on Wednesday and fanned three batters over an inning and a third of work, including this filthy curveball that landed on the popular Twitter account, @PitchingNinja.

After two shaky starts to open the season, Ladner, BC native James Paxton turned in a quality start for the Yankees last Sunday as he struck out 11 batters in 6 1/3 innings of work, allowing three runs on four hits, a walk and hit batter against the Tampa Bay Rays.

Paxton will be on the mound on Saturday in the Bronx when the Yankees welcome the Boston Red Sox.

Longueuil’s Abraham Toro has been primarily used as a bat-off-the-bench for the Houston Astros this season but did start at second base on Wednesday and promptly went 1-for-3 with a run scored and a walk.

Joey Votto belted a walk-off double in the bottom of the 10th inning to lead his Cincinnati Reds to an extra-innings win over the Kansas City Royals on Tuesday. The Etobicoke, Ontario native is hitting just .212 but is getting on base at a .369 clip.

Cal Quantrill hadn’t seen action on the mound since August 1 but got on the mound for three innings on Monday and made them count allowing just two hits and a hit batter to earn the win over the Los Angeles Dodgers. The win improves his record to 2-0 on the season with a 3.12 ERA.

The news was not all positive for Canadian big leaguers over the last week as Quantrill’s teammate Josh Naylor (Mississauga, Ont.) was sent to the team’s alternate training site, as was Philadelphia Phillies’ right-handed pitcher Nick Pivetta (Victoria, BC).

St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Tyler O’Neill (Maple Ridge, BC) continues to wait out the COVID-19 outbreak within his club as the team hasn’t played a game since July 29th while Calgary’s Mike Soroka underwent successful surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon suffered on August 3rd.