ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The day after exiting a no-hit bid after five innings at only 58 pitches due to lower-back tightness, Kevin Gausman had no regrets. Sure, his mind wandered after the fact. “I was like, ‘What if that was the day and that was my one chance?’” he said Friday afternoon inside the visitors’ clubhouse at Tropicana Field. “But I was also kind of pitching differently. We made the decision after five. Obviously, I don’t want to come out when I haven’t given up a hit yet. But that was the right and smart thing to do.”
No debate there, especially given that his back, while still stiff and sore, felt “a lot better,” enough so that “I definitely plan on making my last start.” As things stand, that would come in Wednesday’s series finale against Boston, once again on an extra day of rest with the Toronto Blue Jays planning to use someone TBD, likely Ryan Yarbrough as a traditional starter or bulk pitcher, Sunday against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Once all is said, everyone in the Blue Jays rotation will have made all but two starts since August with at least one extra day of rest, the result of intentional post-trade-deadline planning that exemplifies how the club is trying to help its players get through this season as healthy as possible.
Jose Berrios is among those reaping the benefits of the additional recovery time, throwing another six innings of one-run ball that was deserving of a better fate in a series-opening 1-0 Blue Jays loss to the Rays.
Though he had to dodge some traffic early, Berrios allowed only a Jonathan Aranda solo shot in the sixth inning, a blow his offence could not overcome to get him career win No. 100. Still, he’s pitched to a 2.15 ERA over his last nine starts, logging 58.2 innings while allowing only 14 earned runs on 45 hits and 12 walks with 52 strikeouts.
“Obviously it’s good for us,” Berrios said of the additional rest. “They saw we don’t have a chance to compete to make the playoffs, so I think it was a smart move to keep us healthy and strong. That way we can keep pitching to finish the season with the team.”
Just how correlated Berrios’ strong run is to the increased rest is difficult to determine, but over that same span, Bowden Francis (1.66 ERA) and Gausman (2.77 ERA) have also enjoyed their best stretches of the season, while Yariel Rodriguez (4.38 ERA) and Chris Bassitt (4.53 ERA) have been right around their season totals.
The Blue Jays will soon have the off-season to draw some conclusions but regularly getting their rotation extra rest over the full six months requires both optionable starters deserving of regular outings and/or a reliable swing arm like Yarbrough, a pending free agent.
They’ve been creative before, regularly running bullpen games last year when they didn’t have a starter to cover after Alek Manoah was demoted to triple-A. But that was done out of situational necessity rather than the voluntary break from baseball orthodoxy that a shift from a normal five-man would represent.
Manager John Schneider alluded to that when asked if it’s an approach the Blue Jays might consider next year when he quipped: “Just change the game a little bit, go seven-man rotation next year?”
“We’ll see,” he continued. “Where we are in the season, with the date and all that kind of stuff, that allows us to be pretty open-minded to things like that and see how it works. But I don’t think we’re going to do anything earth-shattering going forward. But you talk to any pitcher around the league, they always appreciate an extra day.”
Very much so.
Berrios said working in an extra day more regularly right from the outset “helps in a perfect world, but we don’t live in a perfect world.” He worried that doing it the whole year would “put a lot of pressure on the relievers. … We have to deal with being a starting pitcher every five days and that way we can save our bullpen guys.”
No matter where they land, one of the hard lessons this season reinforced for the Blue Jays is the vital nature of organizational depth to help ward off a season’s inevitable attrition.
Some that has hit the Blue Jays as of late, with infielder Will Wagner undergoing successful arthroscopic surgery on his left knee Friday, said manager John Schneider, outfielder Daulton Varsho scheduled for rotator cuff surgery Monday and Bo Bichette headed to see a hand specialist for his fractured right middle finger in Arizona next week.
Varsho’s surgery will be the most substantial procedure, with manager John Schneider saying that “the extent of it, you kind of figure it out when you’re in there.”
“We know he’s going to be down for a little bit, and we won’t really have clarity on the timeline until probably January, really,” he continued, adding that the recovery spilling into spring training “is definitely a possibility. With that kind of surgery, everyone responds differently to it.”
Ensuring that he didn’t put himself in position to need a procedure of his own this winter is why Gausman didn’t push himself with a chance at the no-hitter Thursday. Pitching coach Pete Walker, head trainer Jose Ministral and Bassitt all told him, “Keep going as long as you’re still able to pitch the way you normally can — but once you feel like it’s hindering you to the point where you’re just throwing all arm, that’s where you might do something that potentially causes more harm than the actual thing that you’re trying to prevent,” he said.
“That’s the biggest worry you have, that by trying to protect a certain part of your body, you’re exposing another part,” Gausman continued. “I never felt like that. It was just really uncomfortable.
“Hopefully I’ll have another chance at a no-hitter. A weird decision but probably the right thing.”
