TORONTO – Ideally, the Toronto Blue Jays would have given Nate Pearson another outing or two at triple-A Buffalo before bringing him back to the majors. His first start with the Bisons showed promise — with eight strikeouts and one run allowed over 3.2 innings — as he works to lock down a tweak to his delivery, and the best time to transition a player is when he’s built some momentum in both process and performance.
Right now, however, these aren’t ideal times for the Blue Jays, who are moving deeper and deeper into survival mode amid an extended and hard-to-fathom period of roster churn. On Saturday, they selected the contract of reliever A.J. Cole, optioned fellow righty Ty Tice and transferred catcher Alejandro Kirk to the 60-day injured list, making space on the 40-man roster for Cole.
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At 83 transactions for the season and counting, the Blue Jays are essentially through their pitching depth, as once Pearson arrives they’ll have only three hurlers on the 40 not in the majors or on the injured list – Jeremy Beasley, Elvis Luciano and Tice. Under the circumstances, big-league need trumps finer-points development.
“I mean, we need the innings in the big-leagues right now and this is perfect timing for him (Sunday) to start,” said manager Charlie Montoyo. “That’s one of the main reasons we’re doing it. We’ll feel good about him coming here and starting the game.”
They’ll feel a bit better after Steven Matz helped acute need for rotation innings with five solid frames in an 8-4 win over the Houston Astros on Saturday night. The left-hander shook off a pair of rough outings to cruise through the first three before giving up a two-run homer to Yordan Alvarez in the fourth and an RBI single to the slugger in the fifth, leaving the Jays up 5-3.
A battered bullpen that had logged 18.1 innings over the previous five games of the current road trip could have used more, but the few available arms managed to finish the job. Tyler Chatwood delivered two clean, dominant innings to keep the game under wraps, Jordan Romano allowed an Alex Bregman double that came up when he was facing the heart-of-the-order eighth and after Marcus Semien’s three-run homer, Travis Bergen cleaned up the ninth.
The victory was the latest to highlight a resilience that, to this point, has carried the Blue Jays through the relentless roster attrition. They’re at 18 injured list stints for 17 players and Rafael Dolis, diagnosed with a Grade 1 calf strain, could push both numbers up if the Blue Jays decide they can’t play out his day-to-day status any longer.
“It could be anyone at this point right now,” Montoyo said when asked who’s next on the depth chart at Buffalo. “Stuff like that catches up. Our team is hanging in there and they deserve a lot of credit for everything that’s happened, how well we’ve played. That’s not easy to do.”
Offence helps, and the Blue Jays jumped Cristian Javier early, with Cavan Biggio cashing in a Randal Grichuk walk with a two-run homer in the second. Danny Jansen added a solo shot leading off the third – his fourth homer of the season, all in the past week – while Grichuk delivered a two-run double later in the frame to make it a 5-0 contest.
