By Only Players Staff
Updated 7/2/24 3:49am ET
Houston has won 10 of its last 11 games, including the series opener in Toronto. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays have lost 10 of 13 but are slight home favorites.
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Automated transcript is below. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Houston, 10 and 1 in their last 11 games after taking game one of their series in Toronto. Game 2, Blue Jays minus Buck 15 favorite at home. You’re over under 8 and a half. Barrios on the bump for the Jays and Spencer Arighetti going for Houston. So a couple things.
Toronto’s probably the most underachieving team this year in baseball. Most disappointing. They have that big lineup. So much was expected and they’ve just been putrid. Really struggling. Let’s look at some of the rankings on offense compared to a Houston team that really struggled out of the gates. But many were optimistic they would kind of get going and we see that because runners and scoring position was just, you know, sort of plaguing them. But the math is evened out, so to speak. So Astros, you know, top third, let’s call it, in runs per game. Blue Jays bottom third.
Astros, number one in all of baseball in batting average. How about that? Blue Jays, bottom third as well, bottom half in OPS, whereas the Astros. So if they just could get their pitching to kind of come around and the batting, the timely cluster hits, then you start seeing a team and that’s why they’ve won 10 of the last 11. So, Barrios pitched well in his last performance against Houston, but that was earlier in the year when Astros hadn’t really started clicking and so much of baseball is about how you’re vibing.
And this… Arrighetti kid, I like him a lot. He actually has one bad outing in his last seven starts. Now it was a really bad outing. It was against Detroit where he gave up seven earned and only pitched into the second inning. But everything else besides that, a lot of three earned or less, seven innings of shutout ball in his last outing, a lot of one run performances. So I think this team is hitting their stride offensively. Arrighetti’s in a fine group, facing a Toronto team that’s slumping. So I think the value is on the Blue Jays, sorry, the Astros as the road team.
Took care of business on Monday, 3-1. I don’t think much of this Toronto team, and I think Houston’s trending in the right direction, master of the obvious, 10 -1 in their last 11, but I’ll roll with the short number, -105 on the Stroes.
