TORONTO – Rowdy Tellez was a surprise addition to the Toronto Blue Jays roster for their wild-card series after making quicker progress from his knee injury than expected, while caution left Jordan Romano on the sidelines for the clash against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Besides that juxtaposition – Romano had been trending toward a return faster than Tellez – there were few surprises on the 28-man squad filed with Major League Baseball on Tuesday morning. Reese McGuire rather than veteran Caleb Joseph was added as a third catcher to give Charlie Montoyo more flexibility to use Alejandro Kirk as the DH and pinch-hit for Danny Jansen if needed, while Nate Pearson will be part of the bullpen and available to potentially pitch twice in the series.
[snippet id=4931337]
In concert with the intriguing decision to start Matt Shoemaker in Game 1 and push back ace Hyun Jin Ryu to Game 2, the Blue Jays are seeking to maximize their options against the AL-East champion Rays in the best-of-three format.
“This has never happened in baseball, a three-game series, they all are on the road, we’re the visiting team for all three, we’re not going back home for potentially one of them,” GM Ross Atkins said in explaining the club’s thought process on aligning their rotation. “As we thought through Game 1 versus Game 2, is there a slight advantage to winning Game 1 because you can then strategize potentially different for [Game] 2 and 3? We viewed the advantage of being able to put our most consistent piece in the middle of those potentially 27-plus innings, as we thought through our strategy, with the added benefit of getting an extra day rest for Hyun Jin Ryu, an extra day of rest for Taijuan Walker, and then giving our bullpen the chance to be its strongest on Game 1 and Game 3. The back end of our bullpen, it’s just too hard to say when they could potentially be pitching, but the middle pieces, if they need to be deployed today, would be again ready for Game 3. Those are the three pieces. But in this scenario, Game 1 seemed much less significant than in a traditional scenario, significantly different.”
Tellez hasn’t played since straining a tendon in his right knee Sept. 8 and the expectation through the weekend was that he wouldn’t be ready in time for the series. But another live BP session Monday at Tropicana Field sealed the deal and he’s likely to come off the bench and give the team an at-bat, and with a six-man bench – “I don’t know what to do with all these players,” quipped manager Charlie Montoyo – the team will have the flexibility to run for him if he reaches.
For the time being, it sounds like he’ll be used on a limited basis.
“What he was able to do over the last four days was not what we expected,” Atkins said in explaining the change in fortunes for Tellez. “We just didn’t expect him to be able to handle the things that were asked of him and then we were able to get him into a position from a baseball standpoint with a lot of live BPs, creative work that we don’t always have the opportunity to do. It was actually this setup in this situation of having a lot of extra arms to throw live BPs to him, made us feel better about him from a baseball perspective.
“We still are asking a lot of him because he will have not been in a game and the first action you will see will be potentially as a pinch-hitter, potentially as a DH,” Atkins said. “We’ll see as he continues to progress if he can potentially play first base for us. But we’re working toward that in a way that we feel is safe. At this point, it’s workload management and then making sure that he has enough just live action, as live as we can make it, to make him feel comfortable and in a fair position.”
Romano, meanwhile, suffered a pulley strain in his right middle finger Aug. 28 and had thrown a live batting practice Sunday in anticipation of returning. An issue may be in his recovery, as he may not have been able to offer much more than a single outing in the first round, although the sharpness is also an issue.
“He is absolutely physically in a position to throw balls hard, throw sliders, do the things that would be asked of a pitcher in the game,” Atkins said. “It’s just more we felt for this series it was unfair to ask him to come in to the seventh, eighth or ninth inning with only having seen … three (hitters) for 15 or 20 pitches before being in this environment on this stage. So we thought another round of that would make it more fair.”
[relatedlinks]
4:51