BALTIMORE — Think of Seranthony Dominguez’s acquisition as something akin to a stability post for the Toronto Blue Jays with two days left to the trade deadline.
The 30-year-old right-hander with a fastball that averages 97.7 m.p.h. and a 30.9 strikeout percentage fills the club’s urgent need for a late-game leverage arm, one created by Yimi Garcia’s elbow issues and exacerbated by Chad Green struggling enough that he was designated for assignment after the deal.
More pitching help is expected prior to Thursday’s cutoff and it is needed, something made abundantly clear during a day-night doubleheader in the clothes-soaking Maryland heat. The Orioles jumped depth arms Easton Lucas and Lazardo Estrada for a 16-4 beatdown in the opener, before Adley Rutschman’s go-ahead RBI double in the eighth inning off Jeff Hoffman sent Toronto to a fourth straight loss, 3-2 in the nightcap.
Before Dominguez made the walk from one clubhouse to the other between games, it was clear the Blue Jays had essentially exhausted their internal options, using 29 different pitchers this season — not accouting for three position players, including catcher Ali Sanchez in the opener, pressed into duty — and all but two arms on their 40-man roster (Canadian lefty Adam Macko and Jake Bloss, whose season is over after reconstructive elbow surgery).
For those reasons, upgrading the pitching staff is their biggest area of opportunity prior to the deadline, and their first buy offers legitimate impact as well as pedigree — in 17 playoff outings over the three post-seasons, Dominguez has allowed only two earned runs while striking out 27 in 17.2 innings.
That ability to dominate was evident during his debut inning, striking out two, hitting Dylan Carlson and then erasing him as he tried to steal third to keep the game 2-2 through seven.
And now that the Blue Jays have that in place, they have more flexibility to wait out the market over the next couple of days, having paid a high price for Dominguez in double-A righty Juaron Watts-Brown, ranked as their system’s No. 14 prospect by Baseball America, ninth among pitchers, but not one that prevents them from still shopping in all markets.
Various industry sources have told colleague Ben Nicholson-Smith and this writer that the Blue Jays are examining options across the market, linking them to everyone from starters Joe Ryan and Michael Soroka to relievers such as David Bednar, Phil Maton and Anthony Bender. Ryan Helsley — whom the Cardinals and Blue Jays discussed as part of a potential deal for Danny Jansen after the 2022 season — surfaced as a possibility after the Dominguez trade, but it’s possible that’s a bit of market-making, too.
That’s far from an exhaustive list, isn’t indicative of the Blue Jays’ preferences and every team is engaging in some degree of value-gauging, but it is at least demonstrative of how the need is being viewed internally.
Speaking between games and before the Dominguez trade, manager John Scheider conceded that between the need for extra pitching and George Springer’s missing the twinbill after taking a pitch off the side of the helmet Monday, “it’s a tough part of the schedule, it’s a grind.”
“They’ve responded really well all year, so I don’t want to look back on the last 24 hours negatively,” he continued. “They’ve all done their part coming up to play well from the minors, and guys who don’t play every day here stepping in and doing well, too. So, it’s baseball, it’s going to be tough sometimes and we’ve got to figure out ways to get them out.”
To get them in, too, as the Blue Jays put runners on second and third with one out in the ninth before Corbin Martin rallied to strike out Nathan Lukes and Bo Bichette to end the game.
