While there may not be a whole lot written in Toronto about Nick Tepesch since he was acquired by the Blue Jays in July of this year from the Texas Rangers, there are some interesting stats that might give you SOME measure of hope for his start tonight against Masahiro Tanaka and the New York Yankees.

I’ve had to scour the Texas Rangers fantasy baseball blog post archives from 2014 to dig up some relevant info on Nick the Trick so hopefully the info isn’t outdated and still plays.

Apparently Tepesch was/is a Fastball-sinker-curve pitcher who tried to incorporate a changeup into his arsenal in 2014. From what’s been written it appears he’s a command pitcher that throws strikes but has had some trouble finishing batters off due to the lack of a true out pitch. That said, his sinker/curve action can lead to ground ball outs (43.9% ground ball rate in Texas) and we know the Blue Jays play well defensively behind ground ball pitchers (Stroman).

It looks like Tepesch missed the entire 2015 season due to thoracic outlet surgery and has bounced around a lot since then without really being given any big league action to note. If he’s healthy and throwing strikes what we might see here is a short outing (3-4 innings or twice through the lineup maybe?) before bringing in a long man to keep the game close.

Who knows, maybe the Nick can catch the Yankees by surprise as he hasn’t logged a lot of major league innings for them to scout. Suffice to say Russell Martin will have to call a gem of a game to help score Nick the Trick a big league win against the Yankees, but the jays have been resilient as of late (apart from some Osuna struggles) so let’s hope we see a little more of that today.

Looking to the opposing starter, the Blue Jays career batting numbers against Tanaka might dictate some lineup changes for today. If Gibbons plays the numbers there’s a chance he might replace Morales (1 for 14, 1 HR) with Pearce (5 for 15, 2 HR) at the DH and bring Aoki (2 for 6) into LF to play with Bautista (9 for 32) and Pillar (5 for 21). Based on Goins poor numbers against Tanaka (0 for 19) I would expect Gibbons to start Reifsneider (Tanaka’s old teammate) and Barney (3 for 7) to get the start in the infield and play alongside Donaldson (3 for 24, 1 HR). Justin Smoak has struggled against Tanaka (1 for 14) but he’s earned the benefit of the doubt this year and I don’t think there’s any way he’s on the bench to start this game.

The Blue Jays are sitting 4 games out of a wild card, so let’s pray they can surprise the Yankees today and pull out another win! Go Jays!