TORONTO – The question to mull over after the raging tire fire the Toronto Blue Jays’ pitching staff was last week is whether the dreadful stretch was just a blip in a long season, or a worrying sign of things to come.
A terrific outing by R.A. Dickey in Monday’s 3-1 victory over the AL East-leading New York Yankees, eight vital innings of efficient one-run ball, certainly made the case for the former, although it will take a couple of strong rotation turns before that can be said with any sort of confidence.
Still, the performance, and the three-run eighth-inning rally on Edwin Encarnacion’s bloop RBI double plus Russell Martin’s infield single that scored two off Dellin Betances, was just what the Blue Jays needed after a bleak 3-7 road trip that left the team with a 5.13 ERA, the worst in baseball before Monday’s action. A 5.70 rotation ERA also ranked last in the majors, while only 61.4 percent (139 of 226.1) of the team’s innings were covered by starters.
“I was sitting there thinking we’re due,” said Dickey. “We’re due for a game like this that turns out in our favour.”
Each of the pitching numbers offered reason for concern, magnified by a rotation that failed to last five innings five times on the recent road trip. Only twice did a starter throw seven innings, and the rough patch triggered a conveyor belt of fresh arms for the bullpen from triple-A Buffalo, with Daniel Norris among those optioned to the Bisons to get things ironed out.
More importantly, the staff has lacked a pillar of stability of late, although by pitching deep in consecutive starts Dickey is doing his best to provide one. The Blue Jays need the knuckleballer to help anchor the staff with Mark Buehrle and Drew Hutchison, the latter two hit hard of late.
“We think they’re good, we’ve seen them good, they’re a huge part of the team and we need them – it’s not like they’re hanging from trees out there,” manager John Gibbons said of his rotation. “We think they’re just going through a tough period. That happens. The problem is that it’s all been at once, one after the other. Dickey’s been really good, he’s the one guy who hasn’t had any run support all year, otherwise he’s got three or four wins under his belt probably.”
Dickey’s win was his first this year, and ninth of the season by a starter for the 13-14 Blue Jays.
Marco Estrada takes over Norris’ spot for now – the internal hope had been that the right-hander would eventually step into the rotation for Aaron Sanchez, who’d move to the bullpen – while Sanchez gets more time to try and pare down his alarming walk numbers.
“Guys haven’t performed to their ability, that speaks for itself,” general manager Alex Anthopoulos said earlier in the day during a 20-minute media session aimed at calming the waters. “Definitely not off to the start we want in terms of the rotation, the talent is there for them to get better.”
That last bit was one of Anthopoulos’ key talking points – “These guys are all capable of going on a run and getting a lot better,” he repeated later – and he’s right, this staff isn’t anywhere near that awful. But is there room for it to improve enough to support an offence that has twice put up seven runs and lost?
And if it doesn’t, what internal options are there beyond Norris to make some gains?
“The same guys we had,” said Anthopoulos, referring to Scott Copeland, Andrew Albers, Randy Wolf and the rest of the Bisons. “It all depends on who’s throwing. If you had asked me who the next reliever up was three days ago, I wouldn’t have known. We don’t have necessarily one person specifically – whoever is throwing the ball best at the time. I haven’t thought about it today, because we don’t have to worry about it today.
“Right now Estrada is going to take that spot with Norris, hopefully clearly the guys who are here you want them to bounce back, and I’d love for Norris to be the next guy up. But he’s going to have to, obviously, earn his way.”
In other words, the Blue Jays here now need to figure things out because there are no quick fixes.
The trade market isn’t likely to heat up for another month, at least, unless the Blue Jays want to send a package that starts with Sanchez and Marcus Stroman to the Philadelphia Phillies for Cole Hamels. Or they could bottom-feed – they plan to look at Scott Baker, just designated for assignment by the Los Angeles Dodgers – but that may not offer them a real gain over what’s already in place.
For the time being then, it’s on the rotation to figure things out.
Anthopoulos insisted everyone is healthy, so Hutchison will need to regain his command and improve his slider; Sanchez will need to cut down his walks, which will get him deeper into games; Estrada – who’ll have around 75 pitches in his first start of the year – will need to pitch like he did in 2013; while Dickey and Buehrle need to pitch to track record.
It’s all attainable, health permitting, but there isn’t much margin for error.
“You’re always more concerned about guys going down or getting hurt,” said Anthopoulos. “If you have guys with a track record that have done it before, you certainly feel good that they’re going to turn it around and get it going. When guys get hurt, that’s when it’s hard to recover from it.”
Dickey’s outing – he was in command from start to finish – provided the Blue Jays with some recovery. But momentum in baseball is only as good as your next day’s starting pitcher, and how long a recovery lasts depends entirely on that.