No pressure here, but uh… the Toronto Blue Jays’ season is at risk of slipping away.

Coupling dropping two of three against the Baltimore Orioles with the Seattle Mariners and Houston Astros winning games, the Blue Jays have fallen to 1.5 games back in the wild-card race. It’s in no way an insurmountable number, and the truth of the matter is the Jays are in a position to make up that ground sooner rather than later with the next 15 games coming against sub-.500 teams.

The good news for the Jays is they haven’t had much issue again those clubs this season going 32-16 for a .667 W-L% — the sixth-best rate in the league — and their status as a massive favourite to win the series backs it.

Toronto -200; Cleveland +150

Toronto 3-0 +200
Toronto 2-1 +120
Cleveland 2-1 +220
Baltimore 3-0 +1100

*Odds at the time of publishing. Odds subject to change.

Friday: Chris Bassitt
Saturday: Hyun-Jin Ryu
Sunday: Yusei Kikuchi

Friday: Tanner Bibee
Saturday: Logan Allen
Sunday: Noah Syndergaard

Fire at will.

It’s hard not to love the Jays in his series, even though they’re going up against two of the better starters in Cleveland’s rotation in Bibee and Allen. That being said, there’s some inherent risk taking them straight up in the series as the -200 line carries a lot of juice.

That’s why I would suggest instead of opting to take a correct score prediction in this series as if you like the Jays to win the series as a whole, there’s much better value in splitting up a wager across the Jays 2-1 and Jays 3-0.

Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@oilersnation.com.