The Toronto Blue Jays hope struggling starter Brandon Morrow gets a boost when he visits his former club in Seattle for the first time.
Morrow (8-7, 4.55) will take the mound Wednesday night in the rubber match between the Jays and Mariners. The right-hander is seeking his second win in as many starts against Seattle.
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Morrow is 1-3 with a 5.40 ERA in his last four outings after going 5-0 with a 2.85 ERA over his previous seven. He matched a season high with four walks Friday and gave up five runs over seven innings during a 5-1 loss to Los Angeles.
Morrow’s second
On the other side, Blake Beavan generated an unprecedented streak for the Mariners over his first six starts. His seventh outing, however, was probably one he’d like to forget.
Beavan (3-3, 3.59 ERA) is the first Mariners pitcher to throw at least six innings and allow three runs or fewer in each of his first six major league outings. But he went 6 1-3 against Boston on Friday and gave up six runs and 11 hits in a 6-4 defeat. Three homers accounted for four of those runs.
“Beavan didn’t give into it. He battled,” manager Eric Wedge told the team’s official website. “But he didn’t quite have the same fastball command that we’ve seen him have, and because of that he wasn’t able to utilize his secondary stuff as effectively as we’ve seen him do it.”
He’ll face another high-powered lineup in the Blue Jays, who have a major league-best 607 home runs over the past three seasons. Toronto (62-60) hit two of those during a 13-7 win Tuesday with Jose Bautista adding to his MLB lead with his 35th.
Colby Rasmus and Aaron Hill also drove in four runs apiece as the Blue Jays finished with 15 hits, led by a career-best three from rookie Brett Lawrie.
“Every at-bat everyone’s trying to go up there and do something to help the team,” Rasmus said. “Everybody kept battling and we started punching across some runs again.”
Lawrie is batting .385 with three homers and nine RBIs over his first 11 games and might need to keep rolling.
Morrow meanwhile will also try to snap Mike Carp’s 16-game hit streak. Carp is batting .385 with 18 RBIs during the longest run by a Mariners rookie since Ichiro Suzuki had three streaks of 16 or longer in 2001.
Carp, who has also reached base in 25 straight games, went hitless in three at-bats against Morrow during an 11-6 loss July 20. The right-hander won his only matchup with the Mariners (53-68) by allowing three runs over seven innings and striking out seven.
Seattle, though, is batting .286 with 64 runs scored over its 14 games this month after hitting no better than .228 and scoring fewer than 85 runs in each of the previous three.
