NO WONDER THE BLUE JAYS LIKE THEIR STARTING ROTATION
After he had completed his daily stroll from the dugout to the right-field corner on Saturday afternoon — a route that allows him to veer away from autograph-seekers and head for the clutch of reporters in front of the outfield fence — Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons was asked what he hopes to see out of his starting pitchers at this time of the spring.
His answer, essentially: pitches.
Marco Estrada and Aaron Sanchez both threw on the weekend, with each giving up a couple of runs in a couple of innings. And no one particularly cares. The Toronto rotation is as set as it has ever been before mid-March.
“They aren’t going anywhere,” Gibbons said.
That the rotation is so firmly established is an unusual development for a team that, not long ago, spent the off-season wondering if it needed to trade a veteran bat for a starting arm. Even last spring, questions about the rotation were a constant theme. The organization was deciding between Sanchez and placeholders like Gavin Floyd and Jesse Chavez for the fifth spot.
Estrada and J.A. Happ had both just finished career years, but neither had a history of being high-end major-league starters. And R.A. Dickey was R.A. Dickey: he would eat a lot of innings and give his manager gastrointestinal pains while doing it.
From that, though, Toronto ended up with its best asset in 2016. Sanchez turned into a star, Happ won 20 games, Estrada was solid again and Marcus Stroman overcame a mid-season swoon to pitch well down the stretch.
Sanchez, at 24, is the presumptive ace, after he was stellar for long stretches in his first full season as a starter. But Stroman was the presumptive ace last spring before his summer wobbles. For an indication of his potential, consider his performance in the World Baseball Classic on Saturday night, where, pitching for the United States, he held the mighty Dominicans scoreless for four-plus innings.
Teammates rave about Francisco Liriano’s stuff, and they talk about him like Toronto happened to stumble across a wallet full of cash on the sidewalk, which is sort of what happened: The Pittsburgh Pirates were so desperate to get out from under his US$13-million salary that they gave the Jays two prospects to take him in exchange for Drew Hutchinson.
The four returning starters who were with Toronto all last season had some weirdly similar numbers: all posted between 161 and 166 strikeouts and all had FIPs — fielding-independent pitching, like an adjusted ERA — of between 3.55 and 4.15.
The team, not surprisingly, views this consistency as a plus.
“We feel like we have five really strong starters in this rotation, so any night, if we lose a game, we have a chance to go right back into the win column,” Sanchez said. “With myself, Stro, Liriano, Happer, Marco, you’ve got five really good quality starters who can get you back on track in a hurry.”