TORONTO – The Blue Jays haven’t broken in all of the ways we expected them to. This rotation has spent the past few seasons dancing through minefields, each foot falling in exactly the right spot. The Blue Jays’ starting depth wasn’t strong enough in 2022 or ‘23, but it never seemed to matter. They were always one savior away.
In 2022, that was Ross Stripling, who stepped in for Hyun Jin Ryu and saved the Blue Jays. The next year, Ryu himself returned from Tommy John surgery just in time to take Alek Manoah’s spot. It felt like the Blue Jays’ luck was due to run out, but they haven’t needed much more than six starters again in ‘24, with Bowden Francis playing the role of the rubber arm.
The quality hasn’t been the same, evidenced by Kevin Gausman’s 4.24 ERA after Monday’s 6-3 loss to the Reds at Rogers Centre, and Chris Bassitt’s 4.34 ERA, but they, along with José Berríos, are still eating through innings at an incredible rate. This comes just one year after those three, along with Yusei Kikuchi, combined to throw 742 1/3 innings, by far the most of any quartet in baseball.
Gausman, Bassitt and Berríos are all headed towards similar workloads again this season, each of them one year older, one year further into this life as a workhorse starter. If the Blue Jays could borrow some innings from this season and drop them directly into 2025, they’d leap to do so, but it’s not that simple. The Blue Jays need to be careful, but they still plan to let their horses run.
“We’ve talked to them,” manager John Schneider said. “José was a good example in Anaheim, where he could have gone back out for the eighth inning. I figured seven strong was good. They know that every time out, they’ve got about 100 pitches or a little bit more and it just depends on where we are in the game. They’re ready for it. It’s a balancing act, but not a whole lot different.”
Source: https://www.mlb.com/