Philadelphia Phillies vs. Toronto Blue Jays

Interleague play has its detractors, sometimes for good reason. Take for instance this past weekend’s slate of games, which featured only a handful of teams facing each other with winning records. As we move into the third series of interleague action we see plenty of interesting matchups, including six series that represent World Series rematches.

The Toronto Blue Jays will travel to Philadelphia to take on the defending champion Phillies, who won it all last year in their first World Series appearance since the memorable 1993 series when they lost to Toronto in six games on Joe Carter’s walk-off home run off of Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams.

Earlier this season, it appeared a rematch of that series could be a possibility as the Toronto Blue Jays (34-31) were playing their best baseball in a number of years and possessed the best record in the game for a period of time in May, but an 0-9 road trip dropped them in the standings and they have not been able to recover, going 7-17 since the end of that skid.

This includes National League teams, who with a home sweep by the Florida Marlins over the weekend, have dropped to 0-6 in games against the NL this season, including a three-game sweep in Atlanta from May 22-24.

In all, the Blue Jays have been outscored 39-16 in their six interleague losses.

It does not figure to get much easier as they face one of the top hitting teams in baseball in the Philadelphia Phillies (36-25), who lead the NL with 90 homers while the Blue Jays have given up a 5.10 ERA since May 19th, including allowing 31 home runs in the last 24 games, both worst in baseball.

One thing Toronto has going for them, however, is that the series will be played in Philadelphia, where the Phillies are 13-16 this season, even after taking two of three over the Boston Red Sox this past weekend. Philadelphia is much better on the road, boasting an MLB-best 23-9.

The pitching matchup will feature the Blue Jays going with Ricky Romero (3-3, 3.71), who has been a lone bright spot in Toronto’s recent slide, even though he lost his last outing in Texas, 1-0.

He will be faced by Cole Hamels (4-2, 4.62) looking to improve his outing from Wednesday when he surrendered four runs in five innings, however the Phillies were able to rally for a 5-4 win in 11 innings over the New York Mets.

It was just one of many wins when Hamels starts for the Philadelphia Phillies, the team is 7-1 when the LCS and World Series MVP pitches this season.

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