BOSTON – At some point during Aaron Sanchez’s transition from reliever to starter, the Toronto Blue Jays believe he lost some of his aggressiveness in the strike zone, becoming more focused on hitting corners than overpowering opponents with his dominating fastball.
For someone with his arm, there’s no need for too much finesse, and the seven walks in his previous outing may have been a by-product of that.
So to get him back in the strike zone Monday night, catcher Russell Martin set up down the heart of the plate more often, content to let the movement on Sanchez’s fastball naturally take the ball out of the prime hitting zones. Forget pitching to corners, or thirds, throw to halves of the dish, in or out.
"It’s something I’ve been talking to the coaches about with Sanchie, especially to righties," Martin said before Sanchez delivered his best start so far in an eventual 6-5, walk-off loss to the Boston Red Sox. "We might start out down the middle, and then as he gets more comfortable, gets a better feel for his mechanics the more innings he throws, you’ll start picking a little more. I think for right now, it’s to be more aggressive in the strike zone and doing that is to get the guy to throw the ball more over the plate."
Sanchez worked 5.2 innings – allowing four runs, three earned on five hits and two walks with seven strikeouts – and handed over a 5-4 lead that the bullpen couldn’t hold.
Things didn’t start well for him, as after being staked to a 3-0 lead he walked his first two batters (Martin helped by erasing Mookie Betts on a needless stolen base attempt), and eventually surrendered a two-run single to Pablo Sandoval.
Sanchez recovered to get Daniel Nava looking and he settled from there, retiring eight straight before a Pablo Sandoval solo shot in the fourth, and giving up an unlucky run on a Dustin Pedroia chopper off the plate and his own throwing error in the fifth.
Regardless, it was an important point of progress, although at 107 pitches, 67 strikes, into the sixth inning, the Blue Jays will obviously want better efficiency from the 22-year-old.
"I wouldn’t say I ever changed my approach," said Sanchez. "Going back to the last couple of starts, it was one of those things where if I’m not letting it rip on the sinker, you don’t really know how much action you’re getting. Today I felt like I did a pretty good job of understanding what kind of action I had, and planned it to my hand.
"What Russell did well, too, we stuck with the heater for a lot of times, I feel behind, but Russ did a good job of getting into my head that, ‘So what? Let’s go, me and you. So what?’ It showed."
Sanchez’s biggest point of frustration was his first inning, when he got squeezed on a quality two-strike pitch to Betts and then, in his own words, started overthrowing. That opened the door to a bigger inning, and it was conversation on the mound with Martin, who said, "Me and you, play catch," that helped Sanchez lock in.
"It’s frustrating, they score three and I turn around and give them two back," he said. "That’s not how I wanted this game to be, when I got out there, it’s got to be a shutdown inning. They put three on the board for us and my job is to go down there and get us right back in the dugout. I did poor job of that."
A cleaner entry to the game might have gotten Sanchez into the seventh, but he still did well to contain an elite lineup, much like he did his last time out, when he surrendered just two hits in 5.1 innings against the Orioles, but had to work around seven walks.
"It was a lot like his last outing against Baltimore," manager John Gibbons said of Sanchez’s performance against the Red Sox. "It was almost like he was too strong early. He was getting into some control problems, and just like the other day he loosened up a little bit, he relaxed and we saw him at his best."
An issue to be wary of is that as the bullpen’s struggles continue, the internal temptation to return him to the bullpen will increase. The Blue Jays can use more of what they got from him Monday in both roles, only one of which he can fill.