First pitch: Wednesday, 7:05 p.m. ET
Line: Toronto -110, New York +100, Total: 8.5

The Yankees will be going for their seventh straight victory when they host the Blue Jays on Wednesday.

Toronto has not started the season the way the team would have liked, but the Blue Jays can’t get too caught up on things like that. They need to start winning games and this series against the Yankees is big. New York won the opening game of this set 6-0 and that victory gave the team six in a row. The Yankees have scored five or more runs in four straight games and the offense is really clicking right now. The starters in this game are set to be RHP Marco Estrada (1-2, 2.61 ERA, 50 K) for the Jays and RHP Ivan Nova (2-0, 1.65 ERA, 8 K) for the Yankees. One trend favoring Toronto is that New York is just 2-10 against the money line off a win of six or more runs over a division rival over the past three seasons. The Yankees are, however, 42-22 against the money line with a hot bullpen whose ERA is under 3.00 in its past 10 games over the past two seasons.

Marco Estrada is coming off of one of his best starts of the season, pitching 8.0 innings and allowing just one earned run against the Twins on May 19. Estrada struck out nine batters in that game and only walked one. He should be feeling confident coming into this matchup with the Yankees, but he has been a little shaky on the road this season. Estrada has a 1.69 ERA at home this season, but that number gets bumped up to 3.60 when pitching outside of Canada. He’ll be hoping to find some comfortability at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, but it’s not necessarily an easy place to pitch. The bats that the Jays will be leaning on in this game are the usual suspects. OF Jose Bautista (.232 BA, 10 HR, 34 RBI), DH Edwin Encarnacion (.235, 9 HR, 32 RBI) and 3B Josh Donaldson (.246 BA, 11 HR, 24 RBI) will all need to step it up in this game and they should be able to do it. Bautista is hitting .348 with a homer and seven RBI against Nova in his career and the other two guys haven’t been much worse. Encarnacion is 10-for-30 with a homer and seven RBI against him and Donaldson is 7-for-16 versus Nova. If they can channel that success on Wednesday then they’ll make things a bit easier on Estrada.

The Yankees will be sending Ivan Nova to the hill on Wednesday and he has been pitching very well for the team lately. Nova has allowed just three earned runs in his past 16.1 innings of work and all three of those runs came on solo homers. If he can find a way to avoid letting his pitches hang then he should be even better moving forward. It also will help Nova that the Yankees’ offense has been hot lately. Two guys that must be watched coming into this one are OF Carlos Beltran (.275 BA, 10 HR, 29 RBI) and 2B Starlin Castro (.269 BA, 5 HR, 18 RBI). Beltran has seen his batting average rise from .244 to .275 since May 14 and also happens to be 7-for-24 with three homers and five RBI against Marco Estrada in his career. Castro, meanwhile, is an absurd 12-for-27 with two RBI and four doubles against Estrada. It’d be big if both of them can get it going on Wednesday.