Blue Jays fly with the 'Big 3'
Last Updated: Friday, August 6, 2010 | 3:48 PM ET
By Mike Dennis, CBC Sports
Toronto needs Vernon Wells to come up big in the team's next three series. (Darren Calabrese/Canadian Press)Another promising beginning to the Blue Jays' season came crashing back to earth with a 9-17 record in June.
Still leading the majors in home runs by a wide margin, the long balls weren't coming quite as often, the defence at times suspect, Toronto levelled off near the .500 mark as the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline passed and the final third of the campaign arrived.
Perhaps the Jays' saving grace would be another extended go-round with the Big Three, the stalwarts of the American League East, the World Series champion Yankees, the Tampa Bay Rays and the Boston Red Sox.
The early portion of the Jays' August schedule sent them to New York against the Yankees and they're now in the midst of a six-game home stand against the Rays and the Red Sox. They'll meet all three of these divisional rivals again before the month is out.
Time for a little check-up on the road to respectability. If the Blue Jays are making plans to be contending in 2011 or 2012 or whenever, it never hurts to see how they stack up against the best.
Toronto took a 3-3 season series record against New York into the Bronx for the opening act at Yankee Stadium. And they came back home with a 2-1 edge in the meeting.
Ex-Jay bopped
In the opener, they roughed up former Blue Jay A.J. Burnett with a seven-run fifth-inning outburst that included an American League record-tying six doubles. An 8-6 win for the Jays.
Game two saw Ricky Romero shrug off a two-run first-inning homer by Mark Teixeira to shut down the Bronx Bombers the rest of the way. Romero, 9-7 on the season, allowed just one more hit over the final 8 2/3 innings in a complete-game victory. It was a dramatic reversal from the last time Romero pitched at Yankee Stadium when he was battered for eight earned runs in 2 1/3 innings.
With a chance to sweep the series, Toronto's Shaun Marcum surrendered Alex Rodriguez's 600th home run, a two-run blast to centre in the first inning on a cut fastball that either didn't cut or cut right into A-Rod's swing path.
The Jays never escaped that early deficit, falling 5-1 as Phil Hughes silenced the Jays' attack.
Tampa Bay came to town a half game back of the Yankees for the AL East lead and 5½ games ahead of the Red Sox.
The Jays lined up Brett Cecil (8-5), Jesse Litsch (1-5) and Brandon Morrow (8-6) to go against Tampa Bay's Matt Garza (11-5), James Shields (10-9) and Jeff Niemann (10-3).
In three previous series this year Tampa has won each by a 2-1 margin for an overall record of 6-3 against Toronto.
The Jays won't face Tampa's top starter David Price (14-5) but will have their hands full with Garza, who threw the Rays' first no-hitter on July 26 against Detroit, Shields, who beat the Yankees in his last start, and the six-foot-nine Niemann, who defeated Minnesota in his last start.
Seeing red
After an off-day Monday, the Jays welcome the Red Sox who have a 7-2 record against Toronto this year despite playing much of the season with a lengthy disabled list.
The Red Sox just lost Kevin Youkilis for the season due to surgery on his thumb and likely won't have sparkplug second baseman Dustin Pedroia back until the teams meet again in late August. Toronto also benefits from missing Josh Beckett (2-0 since his return from two months on the DL) and Jon Lester (11-7) but will still have a formidable challenge ahead of them.
Boston plans to send out Dice-K Matsuzaka (8-3), Clay Buchholz (11-5) and John Lackey (10-6) against Romero (9-7), Marcum (10-5) and Cecil (8-5).
The Red Sox have Jacoby Ellsbury back atop the lineup with his base-stealing prowess, catcher Edgar Martinez who missed a month with a broken thumb and two more long-ball threats, Adrian Beltre and David (Big Papi) Ortiz.
The latter always seems to hit well at the Rogers Centre and has 22 homers since May 1, while Beltre, on a one-year contract after five years in Seattle, has revived his career, already reaching the 20-homer mark more than doubling last year's output.
The Blue Jays against the Big Three.
Time to measure up.
