Toronto Blue Jays at San Francisco Giants

Spencer Miles draws the ball for Toronto, and there's a story behind it: the Giants let him go in the Rule 5 Draft last December, and he's been quietly outpitching most of what San Francisco actually kept. A 2.83 ERA out of a Blue Jays bullpen-turned-rotation arm is the kind of thing that ages a front office. On the other side, Trevor McDonald gets the ball for the Giants coming off maybe his best start of the year.

McDonald shut down Arizona his last time out — 6 shutout innings, 1 hit, 5 strikeouts, no walks — the kind of line that buys a back-end starter some real trust. His season ERA sits at 4.42, but the trend is pointing the right way, and San Francisco needs length from him after leaning hard on the bullpen all series.

Both rosters are banged up in ways that matter tonight. Toronto is without Max Scherzer, who's still working back from back spasms and won't return to the rotation until after the All-Star break at the earliest — he's ticketed for a Triple-A Buffalo rehab start Wednesday. Add Jose Berrios (Tommy John), Bowden Francis and Cody Ponce to the pile, and the Blue Jays are patching a rotation together on the fly. San Francisco has its own issues at the plate and in the bullpen, with Matt Chapman, Harrison Bader and Daniel Susac all sidelined.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
TOR	0	3	5	0	0	0	0	0	1	9	13	0
SF	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	3	9	0

The bigger story for Toronto right now might be the bats going cold at the worst time. The Blue Jays have dropped 4 of their last 5, including back-to-back shutout losses to Seattle and Monday's 10-1 face-plant against this same Giants team. That's not a one-game blip — it's a full week of a lineup that can't buy a hit.

San Francisco, for what it's worth, isn't exactly rolling either — a 15-3 blowout loss to Colorado is sitting right there in the last-5 log — but Monday's 10-run outburst against Toronto shows the offense can still erupt when the matchup is right. Both bullpens are thin, both rotations are searching for length, and neither team is playing for anything but pride in July.

This is a series-within-a-season game more than a statement game. Toronto still holds the better overall record at 42-49 against San Francisco's 38-52, but Monday's result and the week's offensive slump make it fair to wonder which version of the Blue Jays shows up under the lights at Oracle Park.

Sources