TORONTO – Looking to replenish their length in the bullpen for the day, the Toronto Blue Jays recalled Bobby Korecky from triple-A Buffalo on Wednesday morning and optioned outfielder Kevin Pillar to the Bisons.
—
UPDATE: The Blue Jays recalled Darin Mastroianni and optioned Korecky to triple-A, as expected.
—
The move isn’t expected to last very long, with outfielder Darin Mastroianni the most probable option to replace Korecky after the matinee with the Minnesota Twins.
“We needed an extra arm, it’s probably going to be short-term,” manager John Gibbons said. “But with (Chad) Jenkins getting used pretty good (Tuesday) and (Todd) Redmond a couple of days ago we needed to cover ourselves.”
In 34 games with the Bisons in 2014, the 34-year-old Korecky has posted a 0.26 ERA, 0.757 WHIP, 35 strikeouts and just nine walks in 34.1 innings. He threw a clean 1.1 innings during a one-day stint with the Blue Jays earlier this year.
Pillar, the right-handed side of a centre-field platoon with Anthony Gose, became the odd man out with the Blue Jays scheduled to see nothing but right-handed starters through the next two weeks. He returns to the Bisons having batted .243/.237/.324/.561 with 10 strikeouts and no walks in 38 plate appearances with Toronto.
During Monday’s 5-4 win over the Twins, he made an ill-advised dive on a Kurt Suzuki flare that helped lead to the game-tying run before delivering a game-winning RBI single in the bottom half of the inning.
In sending him down, “the thinking was that with the scheduled starters we’re facing on this road trip, Pillar isn’t going to get many at-bats. We wanted to send him down to get him some at-bats and we’ll look to him in the future.”
Colby Rasmus is due to join the Bisons for a rehab assignment Thursday but his return isn’t expected for at least a week.
“Colby’s got to play a while,” said Gibbons.
