PITTSBURGH — After kicking their pressing rotation decisions as far down the road as possible, awaiting baseball to do what it so often does and take care of itself, the Toronto Blue Jays have finally arrived at an uncomfortable juncture between a first-world problem and a difficult conversation.
And that conversation occurred this week in Pittsburgh, where Eric Lauer was informed he’d be skipping his next start and temporarily shifting to the bullpen in order to accommodate Shane Bieber’s Blue Jays debut and return from Tommy John surgery Friday in Miami.
Blue Jays scheduled starters
Friday — Shane Bieber
Saturday — Jose Berrios
Sunday — Kevin Gausman
“It’s going to be a fluid situation. For that series, he’ll be available out of the ‘pen. But it definitely doesn’t take him out of starting contention going forward,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said of Lauer before his team lost, 2-1, to the Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday.
“Everyone’s deserving to be in the rotation. Everyone’s deserving to pitch. We’ve had multiple conversations with all of them. And they all landed in the same spot, which is, ‘OK, we just want to win.’ Good teams have tough conversations sometimes, and this is definitely one of them.”
Likely not the last. By revealing their plans through only the weekend, and suggesting Lauer’s bullpen stay would be a brief one, the Blue Jays are set to break more hard news next week when they return from Miami to begin a six-game homestand with series against the Minnesota Twins and Milwaukee Brewers with an off-day in the middle.
If the Blue Jays simply stayed on turn through that stretch, Kevin Gausman and Max Scherzer would have six days off between starts, which isn’t ideal. In all likelihood, someone else will need to be skipped during that stretch at Rogers Centre. So, for as much as we learned Wednesday, the intrigue continues.
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“I believe next time through, I should be right back in the rotation. I believe that’s the plan,” Lauer said. “It’s kind of fluid. They told me to plan on still being in the rotation, keeping all my same routines and everything. So, next time around, we should be back in there.”
Less of a problem and more of a paradox — a privilege, if you will — Toronto’s ongoing juggling of six starters between five rotation spots through a stretch in which the team’s scheduled to play just 15 times in the next 19 days will be a delicate dilemma for the club to manage as it tries to maintain its grasp of at least first place in its division, and preferably one of the top two spots in its league.
Remember, a pitcher must exit the roster on Friday when Bieber’s activated. Someone on the team today will be optioned, designated for assignment, or placed on the injured list. Can you identify anyone deserving?
“The way that they’re going to manipulate the rotation, it’s going to be interesting,” Lauer said. “I’m glad I’m not the one making the decisions.”
Taking his turn Wednesday in what has become a friendly competition between the six heathy, capable starters on the Blue Jays roster, Chris Bassitt had a strong day, allowing two runs on six hits and a two walks over 5.2 innings, striking out 10.
In a funny way, all those punchouts worked against Bassitt, as they drove his pitch count up and left him without enough runway to complete the sixth inning. But aside from a scorched, two-run Tommy Pham double off an arm-side sinker in the first inning, Bassitt cruised, executing a well-located sinker away from Spencer Horwitz to escape his only other jam, a bases-loaded spot in the fifth.
Meanwhile, George Springer began the game wrapping a 3-2 Johan Oviedo slider around the left-field foul pole for his 61st career leadoff home run. But Toronto’s offence sputtered and stalled from there, as the Pirates starter held it without a hit until the sixth.
Oviedo drew a diagonal line through the zone from up-and-in vs. righties to down-and-in vs. lefties, mixing fastballs with sliders on the plate, while flipping up just enough early-count curveballs and sinkers to keep them in hitters’ minds. The Blue Jays finally got him out of the game in the sixth, but made a series of quick outs against the Pirates bullpen from there. Ten of Toronto’s final 13 plate appearances ended in four pitches or fewer.
Hey, it happens. On to Miami. But let’s take a closer look at the six plates the Blue Jays are spinning above five rotation table places and how they arrived at this week’s decision to skip Lauer’s start and keep everyone else on turn.
Max Scherzer is on a run of five straight quality starts in which he’s pitched to a 2.25 ERA with 28 strikeouts against seven walks. It’s his best five-start stretch by ERA in two years. The Blue Jays must do everything they can to avoid disrupting his rhythm, thus any rotation plans likely begin with his name written into future dates via permanent marker.
With 143 post-season innings, Scherzer has the most October experience of anyone on the roster and ought to throw as many playoff innings as possible when the Blue Jays get there. The rest of the season is about setting him up to do that while maximizing health and effectiveness.
You could say the same of Kevin Gausman, who has the second-most playoff experience of this group, plus its best ability to miss bats and limit home runs. Those are extremely valuable characteristics in the post-season when games are tighter and a higher percentage of runs scored come via homer.
That, coupled with Guasman’s current form — he leads all Blue Jays starters in fWAR, ERA, and K-BB% in the second half — makes him the 1b to Scherzer’s 1a when mapping out Toronto’s post-season rotation. After Scherzer’s start days are firmed up, the club will likely write Gausman’s name down either the day before or the day after.
Meanwhile, Bieber’s situation is unique. He’s coming off major surgery and facing the toughest hitters in the world for the first time in over 16 months. His MLB track record is unquestionable. But so was Sandy Alcantara’s and Eury Perez’s, and we saw both struggle initially upon returning to the majors following Tommy John recoveries.
Bieber looked like his vintage self towards the end of his rehab assignment, but he’ll need time to demonstrate that up a level before anyone’s throwing him into a post-season game. The Blue Jays will also want to keep him on a regular schedule coming off such a substantial procedure, which makes carefully mapping out his starts going forward a priority.
You don’t want Bieber having too much or too little time off between starts, both to facilitate a smooth end to his rehab and to allow enough time to properly evaluate his current form. Thus, once Scherzer and Guasman’s start dates are set, Bieber’s are likely the next priority.
Then there’s Jose Berrios. He’s been Toronto’s opening-day starter three of the last four seasons and an important culture setter within the team’s clubhouse. He’s been MLB’s most consistent, reliable pitcher for over a decade, leading the league in starts since 2018. And he hasn’t looked like himself for weeks.
Berrios’s fastball velocity and slurve movement have been trending down since June. The current Stuff+ grades on all five of his pitches are the lowest of his career. Berrios still locates well and finds big pitches in big spots, which has allowed him to minimize damage in a host of starts marred by hard contact this season. But the Blue Jays’ confidence in him is apparent in the fact he’s surpassed 90 pitches only once since the beginning of July.
Still, you can’t decide who starts in the playoffs until you qualify for the playoffs, and Berrios is the kind of pitcher who gets you there. He’s on track for 32 starts and over 170 innings for the seventh straight year (skipping the 60-game COVID season). His 4.00 ERA is still below both MLB’s average and that of his own career. He’s the modern-day Mark Buehrle.
And the long-honed routines that allow Berrios to shoulder such an unmatched workload are imperative to him continuing to effectively Pac-Man innings the rest of the way, allowing the rest of Toronto’s pitching staff room to breathe. There’s a lot of value in that, not to mention the ancillary benefits of other pitchers learning from Berrios and raising their games to match his relentless work ethic. The Blue Jays may not turn to Berrios for a post-season start. But they also aren’t asking him to interrupt his rhythm and pitch out of the bullpen for the first time in eight years.
We’ve arrived at Bassitt, who, as John Schneider likes to say, does weird well. He pitches through sinus infections, neck spasms, downpours, heat waves, his wife’s labour.
He’s fiercely proud of his ability to outwit a lineup three times over, but not too proud to pitch out of the bullpen should his team need him to, as he did on the final day before the all-star break. Last season, he lobbied to start the final game of Toronto’s losing campaign so the club’s bullpen didn’t have to cover it, before being talked out of it.
Bassitt will do whatever’s needed down the stretch and is adaptable enough to fill in any gaps between Scherzer, Gausman, and Bieber. As a pitcher who relies more on deception and guile to overwhelm hitters than stuff to overpower them, he’s an imperfect fit for a bullpen role. But that doesn’t mean you won’t see him in some version of one come the post-season, particularly if Scherzer, Gausman, and Bieber are rolling.
And finally, there’s Lauer. What more could he have done to earn a permanent role in Toronto’s rotation? He has the lowest ERA among Blue Jays starters this year by 0.35 of a run. He has the highest K-BB% and lowest barrel rate, too. While Scherzer was lost in a matrix of thumb and arm issues for the first half of this season, Lauer’s surprise emergence steadied a teetering season.
But his gift is his curse — flexibility. The transition from starting to relieving and back again is one Lauer’s made before and can easily make again. Berrios hasn’t done it in his career. And while Bassitt’s profile is an awkward fit for a relief role, Lauer’s fastball-and-cutter heavy approach can work, as demonstrated earlier this season. Plus, if there’s one thing the Blue Jays bullpen needs right now — other than to cut its league-leading walk rate this month — it’s left-handed depth beyond Brendon Little and Mason Fluharty.
And so, Lauer might just run out of the bullpen during a game this weekend in Miami. Was making this decision and delivering this news easy for anyone? No. Is the outcome meritocratic? Nope. Will this weekend’s rotation and bullpen structure last into next week? Almost certainly not.
It’s a fluid situation, as everyone involved is describing it. And leaning into Lauer’s flexibility is how the Blue Jays have opted to proceed for now, as the can skips a bit further up the road towards the next decision juncture.
“It’s been an ongoing conversation where they just wanted to be very transparent with what was going on,” Lauer said. “It’s been a very open line of communication. That’s the biggest thing. They didn’t want any of us to feel like we were in jeopardy at all. That’s what they were getting at. ‘You guys are all doing really well. Let’s just keep it going.’”
