We’re already one-quarter of the way through this miniature season.

Amazingly, despite having the fewest wins in the American League (tied with Boston with six) the Blue Jays are very much so still hilariously in the playoff hunt. That’s what happens when you double the playoff field.

The Jays are 6-9 and that record, as we know, could easily be much better if not for some ugly, heartbreaking losses. But, maybe we have to accept that’s just who these Blue Jays are. They’re a young, mistake-prone team and frustrating, avoidable losses comes with the territory.

Regardless, the Jays will host the Tampa Bay Rays this weekend for a difficult American League East series. Tampa just finished kicking the everloving shit out of the Red Sox this weekend and they’ve won six straight, putting them at 12-8 after a slowish start to the season.

Taking two of three against a red-hot Rays team would go a long way in helping forget about some of those losses we’ve seen recently. It won’t be easy to cool off this offence, though!

On the other side of that, while the Rays are scoring runs with ease, their pitching staff has been decimated by injuries. Over the past week, Charlie Morton, Oliver Drake, Brendan McKay, Yonny Chirinos, and Brent Honeywell have been placed on the Injured List while Andrew Kitteridge has been shut down and will undergo Tommy John surgery.

Here are the expected pitching match-ups this week…

Getting the start for Tampa on Friday will be Trevor Richards, a long-reliever that we saw back on opening weekend. After the Jays chased Blake Snell from the game (this was the Sunday game with the bullpen implosion), Richards came in and allowed four earned runs over three innings of work. His most recent outing was better, as he held the Yankees to two runs (both unearned) over four innings, though he did allow four hits and two walks.

Going for Toronto will be Tanner Roark, who has been a mixed bag through his first two outings as a Blue Jay. He was great in his debut against the Nationals, but Roark struggled his last time out in Boston, getting tagged for four runs over three innings of work. The big difference for Roark between the two starts was his command. He didn’t issue a walk against Washington but he walked five against the Red Sox. Hopefully, that ugly outing was the result of having nearly two weeks off between starts.

We don’t yet know who the Rays will send out to start on Saturday and Sunday, but it won’t be Tyler Glasnow or Blake Snell, as they started against the Red Sox on Wednesday and Thursday, so that’s a good thing. Knowing the Rays, we’ll likely see some kind of opener or bullpen game situation over the weekend, so it’s pretty difficult to guess what’ll be going on with them.

Chase Anderson is the likely starter for Saturday. He made his season debut last weekend in Boston, allowing just one run, a solo homer, over three innings of work. If the Jays could get that again from Anderson against Tampa, that would be just fine.

And, finally, Matt Shoemaker will likely start the series finale on Sunday. He’s coming off of a very solid start against Boston in which he allowed just two earned runs over six innings of work. Shoemaker had a good start against the Rays earlier this season (six innings, one earned run, four strikeouts), so hopefully, we see that kind of performance again.