Blue Jays favored over depleted Royals with Manoah on mound

The Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals were set to play the second game of their series on July 15, 2022, the final matchup before baseball's All-Star break. What made this game unusual was not the teams themselves but the circumstances surrounding one of them. Kansas City arrived in Toronto with a roster gutted by vaccination restrictions—roughly 40 percent of their regular lineup unable to cross the border. It was the kind of constraint that should have made the outcome obvious.

Yet the night before, the Royals had nearly pulled off the unthinkable. A lineup that looked like it belonged in Triple-A ball had pushed the Jays to the brink, a result that stung in Toronto for reasons beyond the final score. The Blue Jays had won just three of their last ten games and were clinging to the final wild card spot as the break approached. They were, by any measure, playing their worst baseball of the season. The loss to Kansas City felt less like a close call and more like a full-scale embarrassment.

Toronto's starting pitcher for game two was Alek Manoah, a Cy Young contender who had been remarkably consistent all season. His calling card was his ability to suppress hard contact—just 27 percent of balls hit off him were struck hard, the best rate in baseball. In June alone, he had pitched 38 innings while allowing only 11 earned runs. But Manoah had stumbled in his last two outings. Against Oakland, he gave up four earned runs over six innings. Against Seattle, he surrendered two. For a pitcher in the Cy Young conversation, these were the kind of performances that could damage his candidacy heading into the break.

The betting market reflected Toronto's status as the heavy favorite. The Blue Jays opened at minus-325 on the moneyline, though action had brought that down to around minus-250 by game time, with Kansas City sitting at plus-290. The Royals were 2-5 in their last seven meetings with Toronto, a trend that seemed unlikely to reverse given the roster situation.

What made this game genuinely difficult to handicap was the collision of contradictions. Toronto was playing poorly but had the better team and the better pitcher. Kansas City was missing most of its roster but had just proven it could compete. The Blue Jays had also been remarkably unlucky the night before—they had hit five balls with exit velocities over 105 miles per hour, and four of them had resulted in outs. In fact, Toronto led all of baseball in hard-hit contact rate, even during this stretch of poor results. They were hitting the ball harder than anyone; they were just not getting results.

Manoah's matchup against a depleted Kansas City lineup seemed to tilt heavily in Toronto's favor. A pitcher who specialized in soft contact was about to face hitters with little major league experience. The Blue Jays' team total over 5.5 runs looked like one of the better bets available, given that they would be facing a pitcher who struggled to generate hard contact while they themselves were the hardest-hitting team in baseball. The math suggested Toronto should break through.

But the real edge, some analysts argued, lay in the first inning. Kansas City gave up the third-most first-inning runs in the majors, a pattern that had plagued them throughout the season. The Blue Jays, desperate to set a tone after the previous night's loss and needing wins before the break to feel secure about their playoff position, had every reason to come out swinging. At plus-200 odds, backing Toronto to win the first inning looked like value—a team that had been embarrassed the night before, facing a weakened opponent, with a Cy Young contender on the mound. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one: Toronto had to start playing better baseball, and this was as good a spot as any to begin.