When the Blue Jays open the American League Championship Series on the road in Cleveland Friday, these six players will be among the potential difference makers worth watching …

Josh Donaldson, 3B, Blue Jays

He slashed a silly .500/.536/.778 in the AL Division Series win over the Texas Rangers and set the tone for the series by working over Cole Hamels for a nine-pitch walk in Game 1. Donaldson played through a hip injury that requires hours of treatment on game day and made steady and hard contact while playing sparkling defence. Cleveland pitches him tough, but a similar approach in this series will ensure he’s in the middle of things.

Corey Kluber, RHP, Cleveland

The Blue Jays could see Kluber three times in this series, given injuries to starters Danny Salazar and Carlos Carrasco and given the fact that Toronto is a right-hand heavy lineup. Kluber is dealing with a mild quadriceps strain and his velocity was down a smidgen in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Boston Red Sox. Kluber is one of the best starters in the majors at inducing weak contact and had a .203 opponents average against right-handed hitters.

Russell Martin, C, Blue Jays

Called the backbone of the team by manager John Gibbons after the ALDS, Martin will have his hands full defensively against the AL’s best base-running team (134 stolen bases and an 81.2 per cent success rate) in addition to maintaining his bedside manner with the Blue Jays pitchers. Martin has also hit well against Cleveland in his career, and has intriguing numbers against the team’s nuclear weapon (five walks in 10 plate appearances against Andrew Miller) and has a home run in three at-bats against closer Cody Allen, while touching Kluber for a pair of round-trippers.

Andrew Miller, LHP, Cleveland

And so once again the post-season has turned into an opportunity to showcase some kind of relief revolution. Just as the Kansas City Royals’ past two post-seasons had everybody stocking up on multiple hard-throwing pseudo-closers to use in the eighth inning, manager Terry Francona’s aggressive use of the hard-throwing Miller as early as the fifth inning in his team’s ALDS Game 1 win over Boston has baseball people all a-titter. The Blue Jays know Miller well from his time with the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees and have never really seemed over-awed by him, and in a 2-3-2 series format with a chance of three games in three days under the closed roof of the Rogers Centre, Miller’s performance against a team that seemed to have found its home run stroke could be telling.

Carlos Santana, DH, Cleveland

One of five switch-hitters on the Cleveland roster in the ALCS, Santana has crushed Blue Jays pitching throughout his career — and lights up the Rogers Centre to a .368 career mark. He is a better hitter against left-handers than right-handers, which will present an interesting tactical dilemma for Gibbons. He’s also a patient leadoff hitter.

Melvin Upton Jr., OF, Blue Jays

Eh? How can a guy who isn’t even guaranteed to be in the starting lineup be considered a key to any playoff series? The answer lies in the importance attached to Indians reliever Miller, because Upton has done damage to him in the past: three home runs and, because it’s Upton we’re talking about, four strikeouts in 12 career at-bats. Given the aggressive use of Miller by Francona, it’s going to be interesting to see when or if Gibbons responds by pinch-hitting for, say, left-handed hitting Michael Saunders early in the game, especially knowing he’s likely going to be facing right-handed closer Allen or set-up man Bryan Shaw at some point. Upton might get some of the biggest at-bats of this series.

The pick: Blue Jays in six games.