With the Toronto Blue Jays moving into their final series of the regular season, the American League East title firmly in their back pocket, thoughts move toward the construction of a playoff roster.
First, the nuts and bolts: the playoff roster of 25 can change from series to series, but cannot change within a series unless a player is placed on the playoff disabled list. Anyone placed on the disabled list in the post-season must miss the remainder of the current series as well as all of the next series. Everyone currently wearing a Blue Jays uniform is eligible to be on the playoff roster, whether they were active on Aug. 31 or not (yes, even whoever you’re thinking might not be), except for Darwin Barney, who was acquired by the Blue Jays from the Los Angeles Dodgers in September.
The Blue Jays don’t have to submit a roster for their American League Division Series until the morning of Oct. 8, so they’ll know who they’re going to face before they put it together, but that shouldn’t have that great a bearing on things.
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There’s no need for a fifth starter in the playoffs, which means there’s not a place in the starting rotation for either of Mark Buehrle or Drew Hutchison. Buehrle has flagged down the stretch, though in the overall he’ll wind up having had a good year and was an integral piece of this division championship. But there’s no room for sentiment in the post-season, and while Buehrle is an exceptional teammate and someone you absolutely want to be a part of things, he simply isn’t one of the Blue Jays’ four best starting pitchers. Neither is Hutchison, whose season has featured far more downs than ups.
The four starters will be David Price, Marcus Stroman, R.A. Dickey and Marco Estrada, but not necessarily in that order. Though Stroman has pitched well enough in the four starts since his miraculous return from not-so-season-ending knee surgery to be considered a co-ace with Price, it might be better to slot Dickey in between Price and Stroman. That would ensure Dickey pitches in the controlled environment of Rogers Centre in Game 2 (and Game 6, potentially, as the playoffs proceed) and that Stroman would get the ball in a Game 7 should the Jays advance beyond the first round.
Two off-days within a series of no more than five games means the bullpen won’t need much rest at all. It’s conceivable that Roberto Osuna, Brett Cecil, Mark Lowe, Aaron Sanchez and LaTroy Hawkins could pitch in every single game of the series if need be. This obviously lessens the need for great bullpen depth, but teams tend to think conservatively when it comes to building a playoff bullpen, not wanting to get caught short-handed if a game winds up going 15 or 16 innings.
If it were up to me, I’d go with a six-man bullpen in a best-of-five series, but the Blue Jays will take at least seven relievers. One can only hope they don’t take eight.
Osuna, Cecil, Lowe, Sanchez and Hawkins are all guaranteed spots in the bullpen, as should Liam Hendriks be. That leaves one open spot in a seven-man bullpen and one would think the top candidates for that spot are Aaron Loup and Ryan Tepera.
Loup has been used more as a pure left-handed one out guy lately by manager John Gibbons, facing only left-handed hitters in a short outing in eight of his last nine appearances. The problem is he hasn’t exactly been great in what’s clearly been an audition for a spot on the playoff roster. In Thursday’s loss in Baltimore, Loup was brought in to face lefty Gerardo Parra and hit him with a pitch. The night before, he faced four hitters — two lefties and two righties — in the Jays’ first hangover game. He did retire both lefties, but both the righties got hits. Saturday against the Rays he came in for Kevin Kiermaier and got him to ground out. Before that, Loup gave up a single to the Yankees’ Brett Gardner, walked Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman and gave up an RBI double to New York’s Didi Gregorius.
The results have been mixed, but in the month of September lefties have gone 3-for-12 with a walk and two hit batsmen against Loup. That’s a tiny sample size opponents’ slash line of .250/.400/.333, which doesn’t exactly scream reliability for the post-season.
Loup will likely get a couple more chances in Tampa Bay because the temptation to carry a second left-hander in a playoff bullpen is overwhelming, which is why he’ll probably get the nod over Tepera.
Eleven pitchers means 14 position players, and most of them are pretty obvious. Russell Martin and Dioner Navarro behind the plate, infielders Edwin Encarnacion, Justin Smoak, Chris Colabello, Ryan Goins, Troy Tulowitzki (he says he’ll be good to go), Josh Donaldson and Cliff Pennington, along with outfielders Ben Revere, Kevin Pillar and Jose Bautista are clear locks.
That leaves two open spots, and one would imagine the top candidates are Ezequiel Carrera, Dalton Pompey and Josh Thole, with Jonathan Diaz and Matt Hague having an outside shot.
Taking Thole would allow the Blue Jays to use Navarro as a pure bat off the bench in the games Martin starts (the Jays are considering having Navarro catch Estrada’s playoff starts) without having to worry about burning their backup catcher. It’s not a terrible idea, though it seems like a waste of a roster spot. Then again, conservatism tends to rule in the post-season, and Gibbons would be more reluctant to use Navarro as a pinch-hitter if the move left him with no backup catcher.
Of course, Hague could act as that bat off the bench instead of Navarro, but the International League MVP is far from proven as a big-league bat. Hague is nowhere near the threat Navarro is, and the fact Navarro is a switch-hitter who has provided some awfully clutch hits as a Blue Jay means you want him available if you need him.
Carrera has been utilized more as a fourth outfielder in September than Pompey, the only time the two of them have been on the roster together, and such a player is necessary, of course. But Pompey did start in centre field over Carrera in each of the two games the backups played in Baltimore, and his three-hit game Thursday might have opened some eyes a little bit more. He has also helped the Blue Jays score some big September runs with his legs, entering games as a pinch-runner and stealing a base or two.
From my perspective, there’s nothing Carrera does better than Pompey, and Pompey is both the better defender and base runner, so I would be taking the rookie, but Carrera has been a big help to the Jays this season. He’s played in 90 games, plugged a hole they needed filled and acquitted himself reasonably at the plate, batting .276/.324/.376 — fine numbers for a backup outfielder.
Again, sentiment has no place in this argument. The Blue Jays don’t owe Carrera a spot on the playoff roster because of what he did for them in-season, but it’s possible they take both Carrera and Pompey.
Then again, there’s a temptation to go with an additional infielder, because if for some reason Tulowitzki isn’t as good to go as they think, you don’t want to be caught with no backup to Goins and Pennington up the middle. Starting the ALDS with Tulowitzki and then taking him off the roster if he’s less than 100 per cent would mean he’d have to be out until the World Series, which is drastic, so we may see Diaz as an insurance policy. Diaz could be picked over Munenori Kawasaki because Diaz has one elite major-league skill — his glove — rather than being average to below-average at everything.
Of course, the Blue Jays could always decide to insure the pitching side and take Tepera as an eighth reliever, which would be an error on the side of too much caution.
It’s a wonderful thing to have a team so deep there can be a legitimate debate as to who the 24th and 25th players on a playoff roster will be. I hope Pompey makes it on, and think the final spot goes to either Carrera or Thole. It’s all subject to change, of course, should there be an injury on the final weekend or should Tulowitzki’s shoulder not respond as expected. We’ll find out for sure on the next big day in Blue Jays history, Oct. 8.