I don’t see much of a way for the Tigers to win this game on Saturday afternoon. If you do see a path, you should throw a dart at the high payout that is available on the Detroit money line, but I do not see it. The question is whether the Blue Jays run line is safe. On Friday, there was a great deal of doubt surrounding the Blue Jays, mostly because we all knew about the ugly rookie league outing from Alex Manoah when he got lit up by what were essentially high schoolers. But Manoah showed up strongly on Friday and the Jays eventually blew the Tigers off the field. On Saturday, Toronto hands the ball to Kevin Gausman, who is one of the top two or three candidates for the AL Cy Young award. It is hard to imagine he will have a hard time with the Tigers’ anemic offense. When Gausman faced Detroit in April, he struck out 11 over 8 innings of work. He should be fine. The Tigers will turn to Matt Manning, who is making only his fifth start of the season, and only his third start since spending some 2 months on the IL. He gave up 4 runs to the Blue Jays in April, and Manning has been below average in general so far in his career. He’s not the guy I want to trust.
If this game somehow stays close early on, let’s also remember that Toronto has the far superior bullpen (at least in the back end), and we saw what happened on Friday when the Tigers’ bullpen got involved. The Tigers get Riley Greene back today, but his impact might not be immediate. Toronto winning this game in a landslide is probably one of the better bets on the slate on Saturday.
