Rays vs. Blue Jays prop bets: Expect Shane McClanahan and Alek Manoah to deal

The Toronto Blue Jays can complete a series sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays today at Rogers Centre.

The pregame narrative: A pitcher’s duel is brewing with Alek Manoah and Shane McClanahan on the bump. We’re backing both players’ strikeout props and are also expecting George Springer to cross the plate.

Here’s our Rays vs. Blue Jays prop bets for the series finale on April 16.

MLB odds as of 10:35 a.m. ET on 04/16/23.

Rays vs. Blue Jays prop bets

Best Bet: McClanahan over 5.5 strikeouts (+102)

We understand Toronto’s bats are red-hot but this line for McClanahan is simply too good to pass up.

Tampa Bay’s fire-throwing southpaw has cleared this total in each of his three starts this year and is averaging 11.1 K/9. It’s a small sample size for the season but this is pretty much what we’ve seen from McClanahan over the course of his young career.

He was one of baseball’s best pitchers in 2022 and had the eighth-best K/9 rate in the majors (10.50). So it shouldn’t be a surprise that he breezed by this line with regularity. McClanahan had six-plus strikeouts in 20 of 28 games last season with eight-plus Ks in 13 of those games.

It’s worth noting that two of the instances where he fell short of this number were against the Blue Jays.

McClanahan had three starts against Toronto last season and recorded two, five and 10 strikeouts in those games. He pitched through five innings in each start, though, so expect him to have a sizeable workload tonight.

Key stat: McClanahan has cleared this line in 23 of his last 31 games (74.2%).

Quick picks

Manoah over 5.5 strikeouts (+118): Manoah hasn’t cleared this line yet this season but we’re willing to bet on a bounce-back performance today.

Toronto’s big righty usurped this total in 16 of his 31 starts last season including his final outing against the Rays when he fanned eight.

Manoah has a solid track record against this roster, too. He’s amassed 25 strikeouts in 87 plate appearances against the Rays’ lineup (28.7% strikeout rate).

Springer over 0.5 runs (+100): We sang the praises of McClanahan’s stuff earlier but that doesn’t mean the Blue Jays will be held scoreless.

Springer’s gotten the better of Tampa’s lefty throughout his career, amassing five hits and two walks in 15 plate appearances for an impressive .385/.467/1.077 slash line. Three of those hits were home runs.

If Springer can’t drive himself across the plate we’ve got confidence in the rest of Toronto’s lineup to get the job done.