TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays have stubbed their toes badly over the first two-thirds of their “biggest homestand of the 21st Century,” dropping two out of three to each of the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox. As a result, they’ll go into the final three games of the homestand against the New York Yankees 5.5 games out of the second wild card spot in the American League, currently shared by Seattle and Detroit. That’s a full 8.5 games worse than where they were to start the month of August.
Rosters expand to as many as 40 on Sept. 1, but there’s a way around the system that the Blue Jays could exploit to get some additional help as soon as Friday night’s opener against the Bronx Bombers.
Through this season of ups and downs for players like Chad Jenkins, Anthony Gose, Rob Rasmussen and the since-departed Erik Kratz, all of whom have made multiple trips back and forth from Buffalo, Blue Jays fans have learned that a player must spend 10 days in the minors after having been optioned before he can be recalled (unless he’s coming back to replace someone who had to go on the disabled list). But there’s another piece of that option rule that can only be taken advantage of in late August.
Once the team to which a player has been optioned has its season come to an end, that player can be recalled to the major leagues even if 10 days have not yet passed. Minor league seasons end on Labour Day, and while the triple-A Buffalo Bisons have playoff aspirations and the single-A Dunedin Blue Jays have already qualified for the Florida State League’s post-season, the double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats will be wrapping things up on Sept. 1, as will the low-A Lansing Lugnuts and Gulf Coast League Blue Jays.
The Blue Jays are fortunate that off-days on Aug. 28 and Labour Day will give them the opportunity to play with their starting rotation a little bit and take advantage of this option situation.
Marcus Stroman and Drew Hutchison have options left. Stroman isn’t available to start during the Yankees series, having thrown 7.2 innings in the finale against Boston Wednesday night, and while Hutchison is scheduled to start against the Yanks, the off-day Thursday means he doesn’t have to.
Right now, the Blue Jays are scheduled to start Mark Buehrle in Friday night’s series opener against New York, Hutchison on Saturday and J.A. Happ on Sunday. But Happ last pitched on Monday night, meaning he’d be starting Sunday with an extra day of rest, so he could pitch Saturday on what would be his regular day and R.A. Dickey could move up to pitch Sunday, on what would be his regular day as well.
Neither Stroman nor Hutchison is needed by the Blue Jays until Tuesday, so if they both get optioned to New Hampshire before Friday’s game, the Jays get to add two free players to their roster for the weekend series against New York. I’d say it would be a great idea to recall Anthony Gose and Ryan Goins, both of whom would be called up for September anyway, to give the Blue Jays defence and bench a boost.
It’s a no-lose situation. Neither Stroman nor Hutchison would even have to leave the team — a player optioned to the minors has 72 hours to report, so if they’re optioned before Friday’s game, say, at 6:00 p.m., they wouldn’t be required to show up in New Hampshire until Monday evening, by which time the Fisher Cats’ season would already be over and they could be recalled by the Blue Jays.
Both Stroman and Hutchison could be brought back for Tuesday’s series opener at the Rays, and Hutchison wouldn’t even use an option since a player has to be off the big-league roster for 20 days for an option to be used up. Stroman has already had an option used this year. They wouldn’t even miss a start, Hutchison would just have his pushed back a couple of days, which isn’t that bad of an idea seeing how this season will be the first in which he (and Stroman, for that matter) has ever pitched in September.
The only true cost is to the players, as both Stroman and Hutchison would lose four days of major league pay.
If the Blue Jays run into a situation where a starting pitcher has to leave early or there’s a long extra-innings game in the Yankees series and they feel they need to boost the bullpen with an extra arm, they can always send Goins or Gose down to New Hampshire (or Lansing or the Gulf Coast League) and call up that extra arm with the same advantage of not actually having to have him report and being eligible to be recalled on Sept. 2.
It takes a bit of fancy dancing around the rule book, but loopholes are there to be used. Isn’t trying to gain every possible incremental advantage exactly what a team on the fringes of a playoff race should be doing?