TORONTO – The latest series of roster machinations by the Toronto Blue Jays is, for the most part, far more significant than the shifting of deck chairs that typically follows a blowout loss.
Yes, Esmil Rogers is back because length in the bullpen was needed after Drew Hutchison lasted just 2.2 innings in Monday night’s 14-1 thrashing from the Boston Red Sox – Brad Mills is in DFA limbo thanks to that.
But adding Aaron Sanchez and Ryan Goins on Tuesday is all about recalibrating things ahead of the looming returns of Edwin Encarnacion, Brett Lawrie and Adam Lind, allowing the club to hit the ground running once the injured sluggers return.
No it’s not Chase Headley, the third baseman acquired by the Yankees from the Padres whom the Blue Jays had far less interest in than has been reported, nor will it be Alex Rios, the Texas Rangers outfielder they’re being linked to who isn’t on their radar, but getting their house in order now is crucial.
Sanchez is especially pivotal since the prized pitching prospect has the potential to provide a badly needed boost to a bullpen deprived of expected pillars Steve Delabar and Sergio Santos. If he can leverage his power right arm into an effective late-inning option, GM Alex Anthopoulos can push relief help down his trade deadline priority list.
The 22-year-old has roughly 30 innings remaining on his workload cap, which is ample opportunity to help bridge the gap to closer Casey Janssen over the home-stretch, provided of course he takes to the conversion from starter to reliever. The late innings is an area that’s been unsteady all season.
“Coming out of the ‘pen I don’t think is going to be that hard,” said Sanchez. “I’ve done it a couple of times down there, and I adapted to it real fast the first couple of times.”
As for Goins, who posted a .420 OPS in 24 big-league games during April, returns after delivering a .676 OPS in 79 games with triple-A Buffalo, and joins the glut of infielders currently with the club.
Manager John Gibbons said the defensive whiz “will play a lot out there,” and with Lawrie, Encarnacion and Lind expected back in roughly two weeks, the days ahead will essentially be a chance for Goins, Juan Francisco, Dan Johnson, Munenori Kawasaki and Steve Tolleson to fight for who stays.
“We’ll see how it all plays out,” was how Gibbons put it.
Goins’ gifted glove makes him, at minimum, an ideal backup on the bench but he obviously must hit more to justify his roster spot. At Buffalo he raised his hands a bit from where hitting coach Kevin Seitzer lowered them to during the off-season, and that seems to have helped him.
“When I went down there they asked what I wanted to do, and I said, ‘I’m going to go in the box, get comfortable, whatever that is for me, get comfortable seeing the ball.’ That’s what I did. Maybe (the hand positioning) was a little different but not much. …
“I’m the same guy, the same player, just a little more battle-tested, going down and having to pick myself back up and playing good enough to get back here.”
Sanchez, who was 3-7 with a 3.95 ERA in 22 games, 20 starts at Buffalo and double-A New Hampshire this season, is looking to make his promotion a one-way ticket.
The Blue Jays shifted him to the bullpen during the all-star break, a move that signalled his imminent arrival, but how quickly the promotion came was somewhat surprising. Sanchez himself was caught off-guard, catching word as he was en route to the shower after Buffalo’s 11-4 win at Lehigh Valley.
He called his father, Mike, in Barstow, Calif., immediately after to share the news from “outside the locker-room in a towel pacing back and forth because I didn’t know what to do.”
“I wished he could be there in person for me to share that moment with, because over the phone didn’t do any justice,” said Sanchez. “He thought I was really messing with him at first, he’s like, ‘You’re kidding, right?’ Then it was speechless.”
The tipping point for him came with an arm-slot adjustment that had Anthopoulos floating the idea of his arrival earlier this month.
Sanchez described the change as a correction of “a couple of mechanical things that would be inconsistent with my arm slot, so what we did down there was go back to the foundation, and the more and more I repeated the delivery thing, everything else fell into place.”
“I’m still low three-quarters, everything is still the same,” he said. “But what I did behind the rubber made everything consistent with the arm slot.”
As a season of promise hangs in the balance, the Blue Jays need Sanchez’s stuff to play and Goins’ adjustments to take. Anthopoulos won’t be able to address all of his team’s holes with the return of injured players and through trade with whatever financial resources at his disposal, so every internal gain he can get really, really counts.