Jays GM figures 10-day DL doesn’t hurt
There is a growing concern around major league baseball, especially among fans and media, that there seems to be an unusually large number of injuries and time spent on the DL this season, even as more and more teams hire high-performance staff to watch over exercise and improve nutrition for their finely-tuned athletes.
How bad has it been? Prior to Friday’s games, there were slightly more than 170 players on MLB’s disabled lists — for seven (concussions), 10 or 60 days — with 25 to 30 more not available to play but not ready to be DL’d.
Simply comparing the two teams competing at the Rogers Centre on Friday night was enough to become concerned about the trend. The Mariners had 80 per cent of their starting rotation unavailable — Felix Hernandez, Hisashi Iwakuma, James Paxton and Drew Smyly. The M’s have a total of five players on the 10-day list and five more on the 60-day. The average age of Seattle’s injured players is 29.6.
The Jays only had three of their five starting pitchers on the DL — J.A. Happ, Aaron Sanchez and Francisco Liriano — but have three more vital offensive position players sidelined in Troy Tulowitzki, Russ Martin and Josh Donaldson. In total, the Jays entered the weekend with nine MLB roster players on the DL. The average age of the Blue Jays’ injured players is 30.4.
But far more than advanced age, Jays second-year GM Ross Atkins believes that it’s the advent of the shorter 10-day DL (down from 15) that is more responsible than any rash of injuries. He is not overly concerned.
“I think it will be a better thing to study after a full year,” Atkins said prior to Friday’s game featuring two replacement starting pitchers in Joe Biagini and Christian Bergman.
“The more pertinent thing to look at will be days missed. Like Liriano might only miss one start. The way we viewed (the 10-day DL), there was even discussion around it potentially being shorter, but you don’t want it to be to the point where teams can potentially manipulate it. It made sense to all 30 GMs (who voted unanimously). The more flexibility we can have and the more agility we can have around using the bulk of our 40-man roster seemed to make a lot of sense.”
Even the blister problem on the middle finger of Sanchez’s right hand didn’t lead to questions about the DL, according to Atkins. Sanchez had the fingernail shaved down, then after 14 days made a premature return, throwing just one inning in an April 30 start vs. the Rays before the fingernail split and forced him back onto the disabled list.
“We were torn between … it really comes down to a very subjective — there’s not a lot of data around it,” Atkins said. “We didn’t have a ton of experience around fingernail issues. We had called around as much as we could, but we had to go with how he was feeling and what we thought would be realistic based on what Aaron felt. It’s hard to say whether it would or would not have happened the next time.”
Recall that a season ago the Jays tried to control the inning total for their young star, even optioning Sanchez to the minors in August so he would not pitch. But not even that side benefit — sitting early this year and being stronger later — offers any comfort to the Jays. This is just a freakish injury. He will have thrown one inning in 29 days at the time he makes his return to the mound on Sunday.
“We weren’t worried about his workload,” Atkins said of this year’s laissez pitch attitude. “We thought we would be able to manage it in a way, just by going from start to start and working off how he felt, sometimes having to pull back, sometimes having to push. We still have to do that.”
The biggest worry for the Jays has been the quality of the replacement starting pitchers they have had to rely on. Beyond the highly regarded starting five, when injuries struck they had had to dig deep for righthanders Mat Latos, Casey Lawrence (now a Mariner) and Mike Bolsinger, plus taking Joe Biagini out of a setup role.
The problem is that many of the more advanced pitching prospects in the Jays’ system were traded at the deadline in 2015 as the Jays went all in. It worked in 2015 and 2016 with good health in the rotation, but this year, no.
“It’s just one of the hardest things to acquire — a young optionable starter as a major-league weapon,” Atkins said.
“You can look across (at the M’s). So we did what we thought was best for the organization, to sign minorleague free agents that we thought could be optioned. Doing everything we could to retain Bolsinger and build up Biagini were the things that we did to ensure that, if these things did happen, we had a line of defence.”
It’s an interesting crisis. Certainly the Jays would be better off with one or more of Daniel Norris, Matt Boyd and Jeff Hoffman, good young prospects dealt by former GM Alex Anthopoulos in order to win the East in ’15. But the fact is, with no trades they would not have won. So, was it worth it then to be struggling today?
“We did trade a couple of guys, specifically the two guys in Detroit,” manager John Gibbons said. “But you look back and you wouldn’t (change things). You’re either in it to win or you’re not. There were some great moves that finally put us over the top. So I’ve got zero complaints about that.”
Meanwhile, a hamstrung Kendrys Morales was ready to at least pinchhit Friday. Tulowitzki will play rehab games in Dunedin and join the Jays on Wednesday in Atlanta. Sanchez is back vs. the M’s on Sunday. Liriano should be ready when his 10 days are up. But there is no timetable for Happ and Donaldson.