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Marlins-Blue Jays Preview

Jun 13, 2009 - 10:40 PM By ALAN FERGUSON STATS Writer

Florida (30-33) at Toronto (34-29), 1:07 p.m. EDT

After narrowly avoiding a rare loss to the Toronto Blue Jays, the Florida Marlins have a chance for their first three-game win streak since the end of April.

The Marlins look to continue their dominance of the Blue Jays in Sunday's finale of a three-game series at Rogers Centre.

With a five-run lead in the fourth inning Saturday, Florida (31-33) appeared to be cruising toward its seventh consecutive win over Toronto (34-30) and 16th in 20 meetings. The Blue Jays, however, cut that deficit to one in the seventh before the Marlins held on for a 6-5 victory - their fourth straight in Toronto.

Jeremy Hermida recorded his fifth straight multihit performance, homering for the third time in that span with a two-run shot. Cody Ross' two-run homer was his second home run in as many games for the Marlins, who are batting .308 over their last six contests and have gotten at least 11 hits in each of their last four.

Ross, batting .340 over his last 27 games, hit his third grand slam of the season the previous night in his first game at Rogers Centre, where Florida is 9-2 all-time.

"This is a great place to hit," Ross said. "It's just something about the way the ball flies here, it goes. The batter's eye is great. It's just a good ballpark."

Looking to win three straight for the first time since April 28-30, the Marlins will try to continue that hot hitting against Toronto's Brian Tallet (4-3, 4.12 ERA), who's coming off one of his best outings of the season. The left-hander threw seven innings in a 9-0 victory Tuesday night at Texas to win his second straight decision.

Tallet has never started versus Florida. He appeared twice in relief against the Marlins in 2006.

He'll be opposed by Florida's Josh Johnson (5-1, 2.73), who's looking for his third win in four starts and is among the NL leaders in ERA.

The right-hander outpitched Roy Halladay with 5 2-3 innings of one-run ball to win his only start against Toronto 4-1 on June 18, 2006. He'll face a struggling Blue Jays lineup, as manager Cito Gaston has been forced to make changes with his team's batting average dipping from .292 to .278 over the last 24 games.

Alex Rios, dropped from the third spot to sixth Friday night, responded with four of his team's six hits Saturday and hit a two-run homer in the fourth. However, Vernon Wells, bumped out of the cleanup spot Friday, is in a 0-for-14 slump and has not homered in 134 at-bats, the longest drought of his career.

"You've got to hit the ball hard to hit a home run and that hasn't really been happening too often," Wells said.