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<\/a>Toronto won four of six games on its opening homestand and now take to the road for the first time against Los Angeles Friday night.\u00a0 The Blue Jays will play the Angels 10 times this season, including seven games at the Rogers Centre and just three at tonight\u2019s venue.\u00a0 The team will also be playing its first game against former player Vernon Wells, who had 31 home runs and 88 RBIs last season.\u00a0 \u201cIt will be interesting,\u201d Wells said.\u00a0 It will be fun to see the buys, but obviously it will be a little different.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be in the other dugout.\u201d\u00a0 Despite Thursday\u2019s 2-1 loss, the Blue Jays opened their season by winning the first two season series, leaving manager John Farrell optimistic.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ve had a good first week,\u201d Farrell commented.\u00a0 \u201cWith all the things we\u2019ve had to deal with, we haven\u2019t had our full roster.\u201d\u00a0 Toronto is 127-116 versus right-handed starters the past two-plus seasons.<\/p>\n
Blue Jays starting pitcher Kyle Drabek collected his first Major League victory, in a 6-1 win versus Minnesota on April 2, holding the Twins to one hit in seven innings.\u00a0 It continued a strong run from spring training that saw him post a 2-0 record and 2.81 ERA in four starts.\u00a0 Drabek has implemented a cutter this season that he hopes will help him fulfill the high expectations that many have placed on him.\u00a0 The 23-year-old right-hander was named Eastern League Pitcher of the Year in 2010 after recording a 14-9 record with a 2.94 ERA in 27 starts for New Hampshire.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles possesses an even 3-3 record this season and two of its defeats have been by the way of walk-off home runs.\u00a0 The Angels will now open up a six-game homestand and currently lead the majors with 118 total bases and rank second with a .603 slugging percentage.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t think it makes much sense to look at the road trip,\u201d said manager Mike Scioscia.\u00a0 \u201cOur challenge is ahead of us.\u00a0 The schedule keeps coming with a tough game every day and you have to be ready for it.\u201d\u00a0 The franchise is 23-27 all-time in home openers and has won six of the last seven openers at The Big A.\u00a0 Los Angeles is 96-71 at home the past two years.<\/p>\n
Angels starting pitcher Ervin Santana bounced back from a tough 2009 season to finish 17-10 with four complete games, one shut out and a 3.92 ERA in 33 starts.\u00a0 The right-hander received a no decision in his last start against the Royals on the road, surrendering three runs and seven hits over 6.2 innings of work.\u00a0 Santana will be making his 10th career starts and appearance versus the Jays, winning each of his last four starts against them.\u00a0 In 2010, he went 3-0 with two complete games and a 4.22 ERA.<\/p>\n
Bettors will be interested in backing the Angels due to their 6-1 mark in Santana\u2019s last seven home starts, while the Blue Jays are 70-93 on the road the past two years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Los Angeles opens up at home after playing its first six games on the road and hosts the first game of a three-game set against Toronto Toronto Blue Jays at Los Angeles Angels Toronto won four of six games on its opening homestand and now take to the road for the first time against Los […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":4551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[1805,1603,479,223,1397],"class_list":["post-14770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-ervin-santana","tag-kyle-drabek","tag-los-angeles-angels","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-vernon-wells"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14770"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14772,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14770\/revisions\/14772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}