The Toronto Blue Jays will be looking to snap a three-game losing streak when they open a four-game weekend series against the Tampa Bay Rays on Thursday as large +203 road underdogs on the MLB odds at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com.
Toronto travels to Tampa Bay after getting swept in a two-game interleague set in Atlanta, and has just three wins in 15 contests ahead of Thursday’s betting matchup at Tropicana Field.
The Blue Jays were outclassed in their brief visit to Atlanta, which was capped by a 7-2 loss to the Braves as +188 underdogs on Tuesday night. Overall, the Blue Jays’ bats have remained largely silent during their current swoon, with the club tallying just five runs over their three recent losses, and scoring three or fewer runs in 10 of their past 15 outings.
That has generated a boon for sports bettors taking the UNDER on the totals, which has prevailed in each of Toronto’s past four contests, and gone 15-6-1 in the club’s past 22 games, according to the OddsShark MLB Database.
The Blue Jays’ slide comes on the heels of a promising 13-7 run that started in mid-July, including wins in two of three contests in Tampa in the first week of August. However, the team has struggled badly on the road since then, going 1-7 away from Rogers Centre.
Despite their recent road success against the Rays, Toronto still has work to do to overcome a lengthy run of futility in contests at Tropicana Field. Toronto has failed to generate consecutive wins while going 8-17 in 25 contests there since the start of the 2017 season.
The Rays return to action following an unscheduled day off on Wednesday. Faced with the uncertainty related to the approach of Hurricane Dorian, the Rays elected to reschedule Wednesday’s series finale against Baltimore, instead playing a doubleheader on Tuesday against the last-place Orioles.
Tampa Bay ended up taking two of three from the Orioles this past week, closing things out with a 2-0 victory as heavy -255 chalk in Tuesday’s nightcap. With that win, the Rays improved to 6-1 over their past seven outings, all on home turf. That success has kept the team in the thick of the AL wild-card race along with Cleveland and Oakland, but the Rays continue to lag on the World Series odds, where they trail the front of the pack as a lengthy +3000 wager.