PHOENIX -- Twenty-eight days and 2,214 or so miles later, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Toronto Blue Jays will complete their home-and-home interleague series with a pair of games at Chase Field, starting Tuesday.
The teams split two contests at the Rogers Centre on June 21-22 and will play another two-game set, this time without the designated hitter.
Both teams have a bit of momentum going their way -- the Diamondbacks took two out of three from the Los Angeles Dodgers when play resumed after the All-Star break, with third baseman Jake Lamb supplying much of the offense and the starting pitching providing quality starts in the final two games: both victories.
Toronto lost two of three in Oakland over the weekend but has won seven of its last 11 to stay within close range of Baltimore and in third place in the AL East. The strong pre-break surge included a sweep of World Series champion Kansas City at the Rogers Centre.
Lamb will enter the series as the NL Player of the Week after his strong showing against the Dodgers, when he was 7-for-12 with two doubles, a triple, a homer and four RBIs. His RBI double with two outs in the ninth inning tied Saturday's game at 1, and he tripled and scored the winning run in the 12th inning of a 2-1 victory. With a single and a home run in his first two plate appearances of a 6-5 victory Sunday, Lamb hit for the cycle in four consecutive at-bats.
"He's playing with a lot of confidence," Arizona manager Chip Hale said.
Lamb led the National League and was second in the majors in both slugging percentage (.635) and OPS (1.015) entering the week, trailing only Boston's David Ortiz. Since 2000, Lamb was the only one of the 42 players with an OPS above .960 that did not make an All-Star team.
The series matches two of the top third basemen in the majors, with the Blue Jays' Josh Donaldson third in the majors in OPS and fourth in slugging.
The Diamondbacks are expected to recall right-hander Zack Godley from Triple-A Reno to make the start Tuesday as he fills in for Zack Greinke, who has not pitched since suffering a strained left oblique muscle while warming up for the third inning of his start against Philadelphia on June 28.
Greinke (10-3) has only begun playing catch at 90 feet, and the D-backs are expected to err on the side of caution before bringing him back.
"We should," general manager Dave Stewart said.
Godley (2-0) is to face right-hander Aaron Sanchez (9-1) in the opener, while Arizona left-hander Patrick Corbin is to oppose Marcus Stroman on Wednesday afternoon. Corbin gave up two runs in 6 1/3 innings in 4-2 victory in the first game of the series in Toronto on June 21
The Blue Jays will play their third series of the season without the DH, but it has not seemed to have hurt them. The Jays won two of three games in San Francisco from May 9-11 and swept a two-game series at Philadelphia on June 15-16. They scored 31 runs in those five games, including 20 against the Phillies.
Edwin Encarnacion played first base in all five games in NL parks and had three homers and eight RBIs while hitting safely in four.
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