ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – George Springer calls it “kind of crazy” that on Tuesday he’ll hit 10 years of service time in the major leagues and as fate has it, he’ll be back in Houston, where he debuted April 16, 2014, to achieve the meaningful milestone.
“It’s pretty funny to have your first day in the big-leagues, starting in one place and to have that opportunity, that moment come back around 11 years later, it’ll be probably pretty weird for a little bit,” he says during an interview ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays’ visit to the AL West champions. “It’s a huge honour and not a lot of guys get a chance to do it. To stay in the big-leagues is hard and to have that chance is special. …
“But at the end of the day, I want to try to win that game. It’ll be trying to beat them.”
Springer will be the first of three Blue Jays this season to reach to elusive benchmark, one fewer than 10 per cent of players achieve, according to the Major League Baseball Players Association, with Kevin Gausman set to get there April 17 and Kevin Kiermaier on May 7.
Service time counts days a player spends either on an active roster or the injured list, with 172 days equalling a full season. Those who reach the 10-year mark are guaranteed a fully vested pension, a nice reward that complements the longevity that a decade in The Show represents.
“So many times in my career I never thought I would get to 10 years,” says Gausman. “The fact that you’ve been able to do something at the highest level for 10 years, it’s really cool to be able to kind of sit back and look at all the ups and downs, all the times that you thought, ‘Man, that looks so far away.’ I was super naive when I was young. Got called up, I didn’t even know that they could send you back down. I had a terrible first five starts and got sent to triple-A and realized, this is a business, they’re expecting results right away. You’ve got to be good. You don’t get to stay up here because you got drafted high. That was hard for me to understand. So for me, it’s especially humbling because of the career that I’ve had, with so many ups and downs.”
Unlike Gausman, who was the fourth overall pick in the 2012 draft, a decade in the majors was never expected of Kiermaier, a 31st-rounder in 2010.
“Every time I’ve had previous teammates get there, I would always tell them, man, that is a hell of an accomplishment,” says Kiermaier. “To be able to do that and have the path that I have had, such a heck of a ride, it’s something to be very proud of. … Ten years in the big-leagues doesn’t come by surprise. You earn it.”
There were visions for this type of a career for Springer when the Astros made him the 11th overall pick in the 2011 draft and he’s reached his ceiling, with four all-star appearances and a World Series MVP.
His debut in 2014 — he went 1-for-5 with a walk in a 6-4 loss to the Kansas City Royals — came just before the Astros began turning the corner after an extended bottoming out. Along with Jose Altuve, Dallas Keuchel, Carlos Correa and Lance McCullers Jr., among others, they pushed the franchise back into the post-season in 2015 and after missing out in 2016, they’ve been to at least the American League Championship Series in seven straight years.
That’s no longer of concern to Springer, now in the fourth season of the $150-million, six-year contract he signed with the Blue Jays. He hit two home runs and scored five times to help the Blue Jays split four games against the Tampa Bay Rays, as he looks to bounce back from an uneven 2023 during which he played 154 games but batted .258/.327/.405, the latter two career lows.
Springer believes that last year, “I started chasing things, tried to be somebody that I wasn’t at times,” and that this season, “I’ve said to the guys, my goal is to get to first base for them. It’s not to do anything more or anything less. Just go out and play the game the way I know how.”
A slow start – he batted .225/.283/.315 in March and April – and a cold July, when he hit .191/.273/.292, dragged down Springer’s overall totals in 2023. And though he knows better, he admits that “when you don’t get the results that you desire, guys in general, myself included, there’s not one guy in the major-leagues that doesn’t do it, you start trying to chase a cool looking number on the scoreboard.”
“At the end of the day, just like I preach, just like guys always say, the scoreboard doesn’t matter, go play,” he says. “I got caught up in trying to chase it, trying to think about mechanics and all this other stuff instead of just playing the game. I feel like once I got that over that, I let my game be me, went out to play and I did OK for the most part.”
Going through those experiences is why, even at 34, he says he’s still learning, even though he’s more teacher than student in the Blue Jays clubhouse. He’s determined to keep learning from anyone with something to offer, even as he’s keen to share his insights, too.
“My brain thinks I’m 25. My body sometimes doesn’t listen to my brain. But that’s OK,” he says. “I’ve been extremely blessed to have a lot of experiences, to play on some big stages, to know what it’s like to lose, to know what it’s like to win. That’s one of the big parts of why I’m here, to help guys. It’s not always about wins and losses. It’s about helping guys like Vladdy (Guerrero Jr.), like Bo (Bichette), anybody that I can help get to a much better position than I’m in.”
NO LOOKING BACK: Bowden Francis makes his first career start Monday at Houston after earning a spot in the Blue Jays rotation during spring training and pitching coach Pete Walker made it sound like the 27-year-old righty is going to get some run.
“We consider him a bona fide major-league pitcher and starter, so, it’s his job right now,” says Walker. “And he’s going to go out there and do everything he can to give us a chance to win. But he’s going to find his way onto the staff one way or another. He performed very well last year, this spring, and we’re looking forward to giving him the ball (Monday).”
Some upward pressure may soon be coming from Alek Manoah (shoulder inflammation), who threw a side Sunday ahead of a scheduled three-inning outing Tuesday. It’s going to be a steady build for the right-hander from there with outings of four and five innings to, “get him up to 75 or so pitches, hit that five-inning mark, and then make some decisions at that point,” says Walker.
That likely means a rehab assignment of some sort, at which point the Blue Jays would have 30 days to settle on where the righty ends up. First things first, he needs to be healthy and perform.
“His stuff looks really, really good. The velocity is there. He’s consistently in the mid-90’s right now, which we haven’t seen in a while,” says Walker. “The action on the sinkers is outstanding, the spin on the breaking ball is as good as it’s ever been. Now it’s a matter of him pitching and getting back into a routine.”
WAGUESPACK RETURNS: Jacob Waguespack felt stuck in the Toronto Blue Jays system during the 2021 season and wanted an opportunity to log a lot of innings when he became a minor-league free agent afterwards. The Orix Buffaloes of the NPB offered him precisely that and two seasons in Japan spring-boarded him back to the majors, where he opened the season with the Tampa Bay Rays.
“I knew I could go over there and do a few years and come back and still have a chance,” he says. “You can go over there, you can develop a changeup, you can develop a split-finger and that’s kind of what I did. I started leaning on my split-finger/changeup and started throwing the crap out of that. And now it’s a good pitch for me. Their strike zone is tight over there. The guys foul off a ton of pitches, they really make you work. Things like that elevated my game a little bit and gave me a sense of confidence that I can use all of my tool bag.”
Ready to come home this winter, Waguespack was quickly contacted by the Rays once his contract expired and “I was ecstatic.” He’d bounced between roles with Orix, just as he did with the Blue Jays after they acquired him from Philadelphia for Aaron Loup in 2018, experiences that helped him earn a spot in the Rays bullpen, throwing a rough inning of mop-up duty (two runs, one hit, four walks but five whiffs) in Sunday’s 9-2 Blue Jays win.
“The Rays offered me a great opportunity and this is the organization you want to come to as a pitcher,” says Waguespack. “Me finding the mix that worked for me and needing to get it to that next level was crucial in coming here to work with (pitching coach) Kyle Snyder and (bullpen coach) Jorge Moncada and the pitching development team. They’re A1.”
STRANGE SENDOFF: The sad scenes of a near empty Oakland Coliseum during the Athletics’ season-opening series against Cleveland triggered some memories of the Montreal Expos’ final year at Olympic Stadium. Oddly, their final ever interleague series against the Blue Jays came at Estadio Hiram Bithorn in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the Expos played 22 games to help generate additional revenue for the team.
Montreal won the last all-Canadian big-league clash 6-4 on July 4, 2004, when Shawn Hill of Georgetown, Ont., threw five innings of one-run ball to earn his first big-league win. Catching for the Blue Jays was current Rays manager Kevin Cash, who remembers the experience of playing in San Juan as “strange” but added “maybe Toronto and Montreal were the start of what we’re seeing where teams are going and playing in different countries.”
His lasting memory?
“The one memory is when (then Blue Jays manager) Carlos Tosca walked out the mound and took the ball from Ted Lilly,” says Cash. “Ted didn’t want to come out of the game, but Carlos told him that he had just made the All-Star Game. And then Ted was OK coming out of the game.”