The Toronto Blue Jays embark on their final regular-season series, with the Tampa Bay Rays in town for a three-game set.
The pregame narrative: Toronto controls its own destiny in the AL East, but only a tiebreaker separates the Jays from the New York Yankees for a first-round bye. Shane Bieber starts on Friday after being pushed back a day.
Check out my Blue Jays picks vs. the Rays for Sept. 26, featuring prop bets on Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Brandon Lowe and Adrian Houser.
Blue Jays picks vs. Red Sox
Best bet: Guerrero under 1.5 total bases (-129)
I’m going with unders only in today’s predictions, starting with a slugger in a power outage.
Guerrero was blazing hot to begin September, with 17 hits in his first seven games. Only five of those went for extra bases, though, so he was clearing his bases prop on volume more than anything.
Since then, his bat has really cooled off. Check out his production over the past 15 games:
- 12-for-56 (.214)
- .232 SLG
- 1 extra-base hit
Guerrero doesn’t have an extra-base hit since Sept. 7. And it’s been three full weeks since he hit a home run.
Now he faces Tampa Bay’s Houser, a pitch-to-contact guy who excels at coaxing soft contact and ground balls. Houser has an 82nd-percentile barrel rate and an 80th-percentile ground ball rate, per Baseball Savant.
Guerrero isn’t much of a strikeout candidate against Houser, but if he fails to get any lift-off on the ball, this under will be very much in play.
Key stat: Guerrero is 1-for-11 with a walk, a strikeout and zero extra-base hits vs. Houser.
Jays prop predictions
Parlay: Lowe under 1.5 bases, Houser under 3.5 Ks (+138): Both of these props are priced in the -170 to -190 range, which is shorter than I tend to recommend as a standalone. So why not put them together?
- Lowe has gone under 1.5 total bases in 11 of his past 17 games. He’s batting .217 with a .639 OPS in that span.
- Lowe has gone 1-for-10 with six strikeouts and a walk vs. Bieber. Also, Bieber has been extremely tough on left-handed batters so far this season, holding them to a .127/.167/.190 slash line.
As for Houser, he’s coming off back-to-back starts in which he tallied just two strikeouts apiece (over 12.0 innings).
A 3.5-strikeout line is very low, but I faded Boston starter Brayan Bello at that number yesterday and cashed.
Toronto has the lowest K rate in the majors (17.7%), after all. And the Jays’ active lineup has a 9.8% K rate against Houser in 82 plate appearances.
Under 8 runs (-107): Toronto’s offence sprang to life a little bit on Thursday in a 6-1 win, but the bats have been awfully quiet in recent games.
- Over the past three weeks, the Jays have collectively batted .226 with a 77 wRC+ (24th in MLB).
- This under is 12-5-2 in that span.
Both starters have sub-3.60 ERAs and sub-4.00 FIPs, so there’s competence on both sides.
In their head-to-head matchups this season, Toronto and Tampa Bay have gone under this total in six of 10 games. The average total in their past seven matchups is 6.0 runs.
Blue Jays picks made at 9:30 a.m. ET on 09/26/2025.
Jordan enjoys writing data-driven game previews and analysis articles — especially for MLB markets or NFL/NBA props. And as a proud Ohio University grad, he’ll always have a soft spot for college sports (especially if the Bobcats are involved). Previous stops include mlb.com, Sportsnet and The Athletic.