For the first time in many seasons, it appears the Blue Jays are already out of the playoff equation by Canada Day, with FanGraphs offering them just a 4.7 percent chance of making the playoffs entering this series.

While a four-game sweep over the red-hot Astros would help those chances considerably, the Jays are heavy underdogs to win Game One with Yariel Rodriguez set to take on Hunter Brown. Brown has pitched to a 1.16 ERA over his last four starts, and been a big part of Houston’s starting rotation’s recent stabilization.

Let’s dive into the odds and relevant game notes for Sunday’s matchup between the Yankees and Blue Jays:

Brown entered this season with higher expectations after a disappointing sophomore campaign in which he pitched to a 5.03 ERA. The hard-throwing righty has quality arm talent and was fantastic in a small sample of work in 2022.

Brown’s actual results to start the year were pretty ugly, and his pitch metrics suggested a turnaround could be on the horizon. He holds a Stuff+ rating of 104, and a Location+ rating of 102 this season. Over his last 31 innings, he has been hard-hit just 23 percent of the time, and owns a strikeout rate of 30 percent. He’s allowed an xBA of .176, and an actual batting average of .189.

Brown owns an xERA of 3.33 and an xFIP of 3.54 this season. Opponents have a miss-rate 22 percent on pitches in the strike zone this season, which is 12th best in MLB.

The Astros offence has displayed elite underlying results all season long, but their run production has really kicked into gear as their results with RISP have stabilized. It has also become more apparent given that they are now receiving steady results from the pitching staff.

Over the last 30 days the Astros own a 121 wRC+ and .783 OPS as a team. They have gotten by quite well without Kyle Tucker in that span, but he is getting closer to a return.

The Blue Jays’ offence is superior to the ones which Brown dominated across his incredible month of June, but is also highly susceptible to starters with high-velocity fastballs. The Blue Jays hold a -11.1 weighted pitch value versus four-seam fastballs this season, which is the 20th-worst mark in baseball.

Toronto will be without Danny Jansen for this matchup, who went on paternity leave Monday morning. While Jansen’s absence will hurt to some extent, the Blue Jays’ have confirmed that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will be in today’s lineup after taking a pitch off the hand in Sunday’s matchup.

Toronto has hit to a wRC+ of 100 against right-handed pitching this season, and struck out just 19.9 percent of the time.

Yariel Rodriguez has largely struggled since returning from the IR. To be positive, he did appear to be off to a better start versus Boston on Wednesday, prior to the game being postponed after the first inning due to weather. He holds a 5.78 xERA this season, and holds a 4.91 xFIP. He owns a solid Stuff+ rating of 99, and a Location+ rating of 99.

Hunter Brown’s incredible form entering this matchup is surely somewhat inflated by the poor quality of competition that he has faced of late. The same can be said about his strikeout totals, and if there is anything the Blue Jays offence does well, it’s grind out disciplined at-bats.

With respect to this being a tougher-than-average matchup for Brown to generate K’s, a strikeout line of 4.5 looks a little low in this matchup. The Astros bullpen is quite taxed, and we should see Brown given a long leash here in the vast majority of game scripts. His stuff rates out well, and that has been reflected by strong swing-and-miss rates recently.

At anything better than -135 there is value in betting Brown to record five or more strikeouts.