BOSTON – Shortly after 2 p.m. ET Monday afternoon, something weird will happen at Fenway Park.
Actually, a few unusual things will happen, starting with some baseball history:
• Danny Jansen will become the first ever MLB player to play for two teams in the same game.
• Joey Loperfido has a chance to play in two games in two different cities on the same day – at least according to the record books.
• And rookies Will Wagner and Leo Jimenez will have a chance to go back in time, re-recording big-league firsts in a game that will technically take place on a date before they made their major-league debuts.
It’s all because the Blue Jays and Red Sox are resuming a suspended game from June 26 with rosters that look substantially different. As a result, team officials have spent recent days familiarizing themselves with the rules governing in-game moves in anticipation of a quirky and historic day.
“We’re going in a Delorean,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “Should be fun.”
At the centre of it all is Jansen, who was dealt from Toronto to Boston ahead of the trade deadline. He was batting with an 0-1 count on June 26 when rain led to the suspension of the game in the second inning, meaning the Blue Jays will immediately have to pinch-hit for him.
Everyone on Toronto’s 26-man roster will be eligible to play, even if they weren’t active two months ago. The Blue Jays will need that flexibility, since four of the position players in the lineup that day were traded at the deadline (Jansen, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Justin Turner and Kevin Kiermaier) while another (Bo Bichette) has since been placed on the injured list.
Meanwhile, the Red Sox have also turned over some of their roster, including Reese McGuire, who was catching at the time rain led to the stoppage in play. That means Jansen will enter as a defensive replacement, as recently confirmed by Red Sox manager Alex Cora.
“He could be catching his own at-bat,” Schneider added. “He’ll have a good scouting report as to what to throw.”
The new Blue Jays hitter will inherit Jansen’s 0-1 count, and will get credit or blame for whatever happens next. Then, when the Red Sox bat in the bottom of the second inning, the Blue Jays will make a pitching change, replacing Yariel Rodríguez with Jose Berrios in what will technically be the second-ever MLB relief appearance for Berrios and his first in seven years. Of course, he’ll prepare for it just as he would for any start, regardless of what the boxscore says the next day.
Later on, more oddities could ensure if Loperfido, Wagner and Jimenez enter the game. Loperfido already played once on June 26, going hitless in three at-bats for the Astros while facing the Rockies at Minute Maid Park. An appearance in the suspended game would technically place him in Houston and Boston on the same day.
As for Wagner and Jimenez, who both debuted in the majors after June 26, this could be like going back in time.
“We’ll have to get the MLB debut patch,” Schneider joked. “We’re living in the past.”
Since the suspended Monday afternoon game isn’t technically part of a doubleheader, the teams won’t get a 27th man until the second game of the day. At that point the Blue Jays could add veteran right-hander Paolo Espino as pitching depth in what may be a bullpen game.
Rodriguez would have been permitted to continue pitching the suspended game on two months’ rest but isn’t slated to start until Tuesday. Whether all of this is necessary to preserve a scoreless game in which only seven outs had been recorded is an open question, but it certainly leads to more intrigue than a standard doubleheader ever would.
“It’s interesting,” Schneider said. “You want to keep the integrity of what happened intact – not that much was going on in that game, so it makes it a little bit peculiar. But yeah, I think it’s just part of the rules.”
The unusual nature of the suspended game leads to lots of questions, so the Blue Jays have been in touch with MLB officials including Michael Hill, the league’s senior vice president of on-field operations. Schneider also had plans to reach out to Cora over the weekend, and he acknowledged that Monday’s pre-game meeting with umpires could be a little more involved than usual.
“There’s a lot of tricky things,” Schneider conceded. “This is, uh, a little weird.”
