{"id":57809,"date":"2023-03-30T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T13:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=57809"},"modified":"2026-04-30T00:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T04:20:11","slug":"blue-jays-opening-day-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2023\/03\/30\/blue-jays-opening-day-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays Opening Day: Manoah vs. Mikolas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Any <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2023\/03\/24\/blue-jays-opening-day\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> Opening Day are special. Whether it&#8217;s someone who&#8217;s getting their chance at the spotlight for the first time, or a veteran who&#8217;s done it more than once before. Now that we are hours away from first pitch, the Blue Jays open up an 11-game road trip as they visit the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2022\/12\/15\/baseball-alphabet-linda-ronstadt\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">St. Louis Cardinals<\/a>. To prepare for the showdown, here&#8217;s everything to know about the starters before first pitch is at 4:10 p.m. EST.<\/p>\n<h2>Blue Jays Opening Day 2023<\/h2>\n<h3>Blue Jays Starter: <strong>Alek Manoah<\/strong><\/h3>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Alek Manoah on Opening Day:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think I\u2019m going to be super excited because Spring Training is over\u2026 Tomorrow starts our journey.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/BlueJays?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#BlueJays<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/1LzkA49tTr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/1LzkA49tTr<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Keegan Matheson (@KeeganMatheson) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KeeganMatheson\/status\/1641140915124174851?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 29, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Alek Manoah gets the ball for the Blue Jays this year. His sophomore season was something else, an All-Star selection that followed with a third-place finish in the AL Cy Young Award voting. Coming off a 2.24 ERA last season, the 24-year-old will be the 10th different Opening Day starter for Toronto since 2010. Jos\u00e9 Berr\u00edos drew the start on Opening Day for Toronto in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Manoah&#8217;s Opening Day start is almost two years after his MLB debut. It&#8217;s a reminder of how rapid his transition from the minors to the majors has been since the Blue Jays took him 11th overall in the 2019 MLB Draft.<\/p>\n<h3>Cardinals Starter: <strong>Miles Mikolas<\/strong><\/h3>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\u201cI couldn\u2019t be more excited\u201d &#8211; Miles Mikolas <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/STLCards?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#STLCards<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ahrC2toxiV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/ahrC2toxiV<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ben Frederickson (@Ben_Fred) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ben_Fred\/status\/1639312586972839969?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 24, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It was supposed to be Adam Wainwright&#8217;s final Opening Day start of his career. However, Wainright&#8217;s recent injury forced the Cardinals to go with Miles Mikolas, who gets the ball for his second career Opening Day start. The right-hander is fresh off receiving a two-year contract extension last week. The 34-year-old mostly pitched against teams top pitchers including Max Scherzer while facing Corbin Burnes more than once. Mikolas will continue the Cardinals stretch run of right-handers starting for the opener. Donovan Osborne was the last left-handed pitcher to start for St. Louis in a season opener.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s 45-40 with a 3.73 ERA in 143 career games with the San Diego Padres, Texas Rangers and Cardinals. He threw six shutout innings in two appearances for Team USA at the World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n<h3>Blue Jays vs. Cardinals Prediction<\/h3>\n<p>FanDuel Sportsbook has the Cardinala as +1.5 underdogs against the Blue Jays who are favored at -1.5.<\/p>\n<p>Score preditction: 7-6 Cardinals.<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any Toronto Blue Jays Opening Day are special. Whether it&#8217;s someone who&#8217;s getting their chance at the spotlight for the first time, or a veteran who&#8217;s done it more than once before. Now that we are hours away from first pitch, the Blue Jays open up an 11-game road trip as they visit the St. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3686,"featured_media":57856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2,1071,25],"tags":[728,2650,1043,1800],"class_list":["post-57809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bluejays","category-featured","category-mlb","category-cardinals","tag-adam-wainwright","tag-alek-manoah","tag-jose-berrios","tag-miles-mikolas"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3686"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120970,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57809\/revisions\/120970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}