ANGLES IN THE INFIELD
Good-guy Travis among many moving parts in bid to contend
The demotion of Devon Travis wasn’t all about performance . . . the Jays’ puzzle has a strangely high number of moving pieces these days. Hot Corner, S5 Jays hold off Twins 7-5 in series opener. Story at thestar.com
Let’s begin by saying that Devon Travis is genuinely one of the nicest men in baseball. He is one of the few players who encounter media members in the clubhouse, greet them by name with a smile and ask how they are doing. At the end of most group interview sessions, he will thank media and then apologize if he thinks one of his answers wasn’t up to par. He is just happy to be here … and now he’s not. He is big on being grateful for what he has and where he is.
On Sunday, batting a measly .148 with a paltry .458 OPS, Travis was somewhat surprisingly optioned to Triple-A Buffalo to make room for righthanded reliever Carlos Ramirez. The bullpen has been overworked badly because, other than J.A. Happ, the Blue Jays starters have not been able to pitch deep enough into games.
The schedule has become heavy and the bullpen light. Including Thursday’s makeup doubleheader in Cleveland, the Jays are in the midst of 14 games in 13 days ending on Sunday against Tampa at Tropicana Field. The next off day is Monday. The starters are averaging fewer than six innings per outing and manager John Gibbons rarely asks his relievers to go more than one inning, or more than two consecutive days.
Why Travis? There are some legitimate performance and health reasons, but there’s also the ever-present issue of service-time manipulation. You cannot like the way clubs manipulate their rosters, but for MLB payrolls service time is important.
Players on the disabled list still earn MLB time, moving them closer to free agency. Travis has been on the DL four times, for a total of 271 days, more than half of his major-league time; if he stayed on the MLB roster or DL, he would have been eligible for free agency at the end of the 2020 season.
If the Jays keep him in the minors for at least 15 days, they will then have him under club control through the 2021 season. That, of course, means Travis will likely remain with the Bisons until at least May 15 when the Jays travel to play the Mets, perhaps even longer.
Sure, there are baseball rea- sons for the move. There must be if GM Ross Atkins still believes they can contend. One problem for Travis is, he was playing two of every three games. Catcher Russ Martin is also on a two-out-of-three plan behind the plate. In addition, Curtis Granderson and Steve Pearce are platooning in the outfield. That’s an awful lot of moving parts.
The Jays have temporarily solved the need to use Martin as a backup infielder by conveniently placing struggling outfielder Randal Grichuk on the 10-day DL (sprained knee) and bringing up Gift Ngoepe in time for the Twins series. They can even get Grichuk some needed Triple-A at-bats on a rehab option at the end of his DL stint.
The man they kept, rookie Lourdes Gurriel Jr., can play second base every day until Josh Donaldson’s return from a shoulder injury. Gurriel can also play shortstop while Travis is strictly a second baseman. Without Gurriel, Aledmys Diaz becomes the only shortstop. Yangervis Solarte is not a shortstop. When Donaldson likely returns on Friday in Tampa Bay, Gibbons will need a place for Solarte’s productive bat and he may see a lot of action at second, with Gurriel as a lategame defensive replacement.
Travis has been struggling at the plate for the second consecutive April and needs to play every day to regain offensive balance before returning. As far as his intermittent playing schedule, two out of three ain’t bad, according to Meat Loaf, but this is the major leagues and they’re looking for more than part-time glovers.
This is a long-term move for Travis, adding a year of control and trying to get him out of his funk. Meanwhile, Ramirez will remain a Jay through Thursday’s doubleheader as the eighth reliever. They can promote Joe Biagini as the 26th man to start Game 2 of the twinbill at Progressive Field. He last started at Buffalo on Saturday, so he’s on schedule. Then Friday, Donaldson will be back and healthy enough to play every day — they hope.
PANDAMONIUM: The lasting image for Blue Jays fans of rotund third baseman Pablo Sandoval, nicknamed Kung Fu Panda, came on April 9, 2016 — early in his ill-fated tenure with the Red Sox. At the Rogers Centre facing R.A. Dickey, he took a mighty swing and fouled off a knuckler as his belt exploded from around his waist.
That laughable Panda image will hopefully be replaced by the 1-2-3 inning he pitched on Saturday for the Giants vs. the Dodgers, mixing speeds between 63 and 87 m.p.h., producing three ground balls and drawing praise for his stint.
“I knew without question he would want to do it,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “He just loves playing baseball. It did bring some levity to a real long game. With that said, it was pretty impressive what he did.”
Position players pitching is not that uncommon in blowout games as a manager will try to save his bullpen. Sandoval, in fact, became the 348th position player to pitch in an MLB game among those who made their debut post-1900.
For the Jays, recall Canada Day 2016: a 19-inning, 2-1 loss to the Indians at the Rogers Centre when two position players, first Ryan Goins and then Darwin Barney, came in to pitch. Goins tossed a shutout frame, but Barney gave up a 19th-inning solo homer to Carlos Santana, ending the inning by striking out Mike Napoli. VLAD FEVER: After 20-yearold outfielder and super-prospect Ronald Acuna was promoted to the Braves in April, it left Double-A New Hampshire third baseman Vlad Guerrero Jr. as the consensus No. 1 postition-player prospect remaining in the minor leagues. Guerrero is the youngest player in Double-A baseball, one year and 98 days younger than Acuna, so the organization feels no pressure to rush him to the majors right now. For the moment, he continues to dominate the Eastern League and delight baseball fans out in the woods of New Hampshire. Guerrero, whose walk-off home run vs. the Cardinals in the ninth inning of the Blue Jays’ final exhibition in Montreal electrified a national TV audience, is hitting .373 with a .993 OPS through 19 games at Double-A. He has eight doubles, two homers and 25 RBIs, a franchise record for one month. What is more amazing is his ability to understand the strike zone, with nine walks and just eight strikeouts in 85 plate appearances. In three pro years, he has 118 walks and 105 Ks. FANNING REMEMBERED: Wednesday marked the third anniversary of the passing of Jim Fanning at the age of 87. Fanning is a member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. He was named the first GM of the Expos, the first MLB team in Canada, in 1968. He was the only manager to lead the Expos to a post-season (in 1981) and later on became a figure with the Blue Jays until his death in 2015. Born in Chicago and raised in Iowa, Fanning became a Canadian citizen in 2012 and lived in London with wife Marie and their children, Cynthia and Frank, who is now an executive with the Class-A Vermont Lake Monsters. In April, the Minnesota Twins honoured the memory of the Canadian baseball icon by committing $10,000 to the renovation of Jim Fanning Field in Hartley, Iowa, the town where he grew up. His memory lives on.