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Posted at 12:00 PM EST.

7:10 PM EST. J.A. Happ and the Blue Jays are not good enough to be spotting this ridiculous price on the road. We’re not sure what Happ is eating these days but he has 50 K’s in 36 innings and at the age of 35, has never put up strikeout numbers like he’s been doing in the early going. Happ has 45 K’s in his last 31 frames but he’s only throwing 91 MPH. It appears he has found some secret sauce but let’s not get crazy here over such a small sample size when he’s been just a little better than league average for years. In an era during which more and more pitchers have gone away from their fastballs in favor of swing-and-miss spin, Happ leans about as heavily upon the fastball as any pitcher. He’s thrown the pitch roughly 72.8% of the time this season, most amongst qualified starters. Happ has thrown his best pitches, fastballs, while simultaneously moving away from his slider, changeup, and curveball — all of which rank as negative pitches for his career according to linear weights. Sometimes it takes major-leaguers a few starts to figure out what a pitcher is doing differently but a pitcher that throws one pitch so often is rarely in line for such great success. Hitter’s will be sitting fastballs real soon.

Andrew Kittredge comes in with a 6.23 ERA after nine appearances and a small sample size 13 innings. Kittredge has appeared out of the pen seven times in those nine appearances with his starts only lasting a combined 5.1 innings. In one start against the Red Sox, Kittredge went 3.1 innings and allowed just three hits and one run and in his other start, also against the Red Sox, he went two innings and allowed just two hits and one run. Kittredge’s high ERA is the result of one blow-up inning in Philadelphia so do not put any emphasis on his surface ERA over such small sample while getting his feet wet at this level.

Kittredge made the Rays out of a spring training where he struck out 12 of the 53 batters he faced while walking only two. The 28-year-old right-hander had a terrific 2017 in Triple-A Durham before being called up by the Rays and putting up decent numbers in 15 innings. Although Kittredge has four pitches, he is mostly a fastball/slider pitcher. His fastball can reach 94 mph while his slider sits in the mid-80s. Early in his minor league career he put up ugly WHIPs from elevated hit and walk rates, but his skills have come together to put up decent numbers since last year and we’ll live with whatever he delivers here, as the Rays are playing some very good ball right now while the Jays are coming off a very long day in Cleveland (20 innings over two games) and could be rather lethargic. Even if the Jays aren’t, the Rays are still very capable.

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