The Blue Jays got owned at home last week by the Red Sox, hopefully they can return the favour this week in Boston.

Rick Porcello had a strong outing last week in Toronto, which hasn’t been the case very often in 2017 for the reigning Cy Young champion. Porcello owns a 4.45 ERA and has allowed more hits than anybody in the American League this season, and his walks are up while his strikeouts are down. That said, while his results have been pretty mediocre, Porcello has managed to make it through six innings in all but three starts this season, so he’s been valuable to the Sox as an innings eater, at least. He’ll go against J.A. Happ, another Cy Young finalist who’s had a fairly disappointing season. Last week, Happ was excellent against Boston, holding them to one run over six innings, but couldn’t get the win because the bats did nothing.

Eduardo Rodriguez had a strong start to the season, but missed a month-and-a-half of action due to a knee injury. Since coming off the disabled list, Rodriguez holds a 5.47 ERA in nine starts and, most notably, his walks numbers have increased. The last time he faced the Jays back in mid-July, Rodriguez was tagged for three earned runs in five-and-a-third innings and his four walks that outing tied a season-high. He’ll go against Marco Estrada, who got knocked around in his last start against the Orioles in Baltimore.

Doug Fister was added to the Red Sox rotation in the wake of injuries to David Price, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Steven Wright, and he’s gone from being a stopgap, innings eater to weirdly good. In his last three starts, Fister has allowed just four earned runs over 23 innings, including a one-hit, complete game win over the Clevelanders. It’s hard to say whether that’ll keep up or not considering Fister has been bad for a few years now, but shutting down Cleveland, Baltimore, and New York’s offence is pretty impressive. He’ll go against Joe Biagini, who’s coming off of the best start of his big league career. In Baltimore, Biagini shutout the O’s over seven innings, scattering just five hits and one walk. It’ll be interesting to see if Biagini can build on that performance against a scuffling offence.

The Red Sox have looked like trash as of late. Well, except, of course, for that series in Toronto. But if you take that away, the Sox have lost six of their last seven to Baltimore and New York and are having a hell of a time scoring runs. They’re only three-and-a-half games up on the Yankees, and while we aren’t exactly good pals with the guys from New York, I would love to see the Jays mess with John Farrell’s plans of winning the American League East.