TORONTO – All things being equal, the Toronto Blue Jays expect Jose Berrios to arrive Saturday night and debut in Sunday’s finale with the Kansas City Royals. To get him here, the team arranged a charter flight that collected Joakim Soria, the reliever acquired from the Arizona Diamondbacks, in Phoenix and then headed to St. Louis to pick up the ace right-hander before turning north.
“I just want to make sure he’s here before I tell you yes,” manager Charlie Montoyo said of whether the club’s prized deadline acquisition would fill the TBA slot in the rotation, “because, as you know, it hasn’t been easy to get in.”
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No, it hasn’t but the afternoon after Friday’s emotional homecoming felt a lot more like a normal summer’s day at the Rogers Centre. A crowd of 13,953 once again provided noise and energy beyond its size, with regular “Let’s Go, Blue Jays” chants and “MVP” shouts for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., under a roof that started open, closed due to rain only to peel back once the skies cleared a few innings later, just another day in the grind.
To that end, Alek Manoah returned from the injured list to throw seven shutout innings in a 4-0 victory, delivering the type of performance that led to his rapid big-league ascension earlier this season. While the Royals lineup isn’t going to scare anybody, the 23-year-old efficiently kept the game under wraps, allowing only two hits and a walk with four strikeouts, generating both plenty of swing and miss, with 14 whiffs, and soft contact, which allowed him to get deep into the game after overcoming a back bruise.
His velocity was a touch down from his season average – his four-seamer sat 92.4 m.p.h. instead of the usual 94 – but given his relative lack of work since he slipped and fell on rain-soaked dugout steps in Buffalo, that’s not entirely surprising.
“What was impressive to me was that the past 22 days, he hadn’t pitched in the big-leagues and he pitched one time (a simulated game) in Florida, so we didn’t know what to expect and he was sharp,” said Montoyo. “His fastball wasn’t as hard today, but that’s more impressive to me because he was pitching. He knows how to pitch for a young guy. It reminds me of Vladdy, like if you don’t pitch to him he’ll take the walk. This kid, not having his best stuff, he can still get you out. That’s impressive to me.”
Manoah certainly looked no worse for the wear from the freak spill, leaving him with bruise that had to resolve before he could take the bump again. He said he felt comfortable in his delivery and in command of his pitches, shrugging off the slight dip in power.
“I really don’t care about velocity – just go out there and pitch,” he said. “At the end of the day, velocity might get you recruited to college, but it’s not going to keep you in the big-leagues. Being able to throw a lot of strikes, being able to make sure that my mechanics are in place and being able to make pitches at the right time is more important than velocity. I didn’t even know I was down, but everything felt good, was able to throw a lot of strikes and get the boys a win.”
Supporting him in that regard was George Springer, who staked him to a 1-0 lead by sending Mike Minor’s first pitch of the day into the second deck in left field. The star outfielder then tripled the advantage with a two-run shot to right-centre in the third, while Marcus Semien’s RBI triple in the sixth extended the margin and it was cruise time from there.
Springer has been kicking it into high gear since the all-star break, shaking off a .193/.313/.368 in his first 16 games back from a groin injury to go on a .358/.423/.811 tear over his past 14 contests, with six homers. Regular reps have helped catch him up to the rest of the league, but pivotal was having the right mindset in recent weeks.
“I had to understand and try not to be too hard on myself,” said Springer. “I understand that I don’t have a lot of at-bats, which is nobody’s fault but mine. I got hurt. It is what it is. And just kind of making sure that I stick with my routine every day, understanding that I’ve got to keep going, keep working hard and do what I’ve got to do in the moment and then attempt to block out whatever happens. It’s just about slowing the game down right now, making sure I’m not trying to do too much.”
A Springer finding his comfort zone bodes well for the Blue Jays, who will need him to deliver on the roughly win-and-a-half of production he’s projected to deliver over the final third of the season.
Similarly important is Manoah, both in the short and long term.
With doubleheaders looming Aug. 7 against Boston and Aug. 10 at Anaheim, the Blue Jays plan to run a six-man rotation to get through the grind and then map out how to proceed from there. Maximizing Berrios, one of the more durable pitchers in the sport, is a priority and how many innings they can put on Manoah is a question, but the two starts he missed helps.
“He needs to be in our rotation, he’s done a great job,” said Montoyo. “Him getting hurt, that helped the workload. Now he is more rested and he should be fine the rest of the way. So the bad news worked out in a positive way, he’s fine now, he’s ready to go for whatever we’ve got left.”
Getting him through wire-to-wire is also important for next season, when the Blue Jays now have Berrios to pair with Hyun Jin Ryu, along with Ross Stripling and Manoah. That’s a good starting point, Nate Pearson and Thomas Hatch are in that mix somewhere, but a replacement will be needed if Robbie Ray can’t be re-signed and backfilling that quality of performance won’t be easy.
That’s in part why the Blue Jays were willing to ante up both Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson for a season-and-a-half of Berrios. Getting his calibre of starter to sign in the American League East is a difficult task and the Blue Jays now have extra runway in attracting him longer-term.
They’re also more attractive to free agents with him and Ryu fronting a position-player group featuring Springer, Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and Teoscar Hernandez.
“He’s a competitor,” Springer said of Berrios. “To face him a bunch of times is not fun so I’m glad he’s on our team. And I think it’s a jolt, it shows that a lot of people are committed to us as a team, as an organization, to really go out and get a quality player like him and I’m looking forward to having him here.”
Still, if Manoah can emerge into a mid-rotation or better starter, that will provide the roster with the pivotal financial efficiency of a pre-arbitration pitcher, allowing resources to be directed elsewhere.
Outings like the one he delivered Saturday reinforce the reasons to have faith in the kid, both now and for the down the road, too.
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