Time to arm themselves for battle
Toronto’s offence is humming along, but playoff futility streak will only end with better pitching
At some point, if the Blue Jays are to stop hovering at or near the .500 mark and break free of the logjam in the American League East, the move has to come from the pitching staff.
The No. 1-ranked offence by a country mile is not going to get any better than it has been. The Blue Jays roared through the 400-run barrier in Tampa Bay this week and not even the superior Rays staff could throttle them enough to stop Toronto from winning two of three in a place that has historically been a house of horrors for them.
Toronto’s run differential is virtually dead even with that of No. 1 St. Louis (83-81) yet the Cardinals are playing .667 baseball, while the Jays are at .527 and have spent much of the season below .500 despite their take-no-prisoners offence.
Toronto has outscored Tampa Bay by 132 runs this year, but trail them by two games in the standings.
Now, as potent as the Jays lineup has been, can you expect them to keep averaging 5.5 runs per game in an era when pitching is king? They’re currently on a pace for 886 runs, which would make them the most prolific offence since the Yankees scored 915 runs in 2009.
However the rest of the season plays out, any improvement in Toronto’s performance will have to come from the pitching staff. It begins with the starting rotation, which has been somewhat more consistent recently than earlier in the season. Only when the starters are constantly going six and seven innings on average, can the bullpen get itself in order because the success of the relievers is predicated upon getting reasonable rest between assignments.
Both Mark Buehrle and R.A. Dickey have been as advertised, providing plenty of innings and giving the team a chance to win for the most part. In the last six weeks, Marco Estrada has been a horse, pitching five innings or more in nine consecutive starts. In five of those nine starts, he has gone seven innings, carrying no-hitters into the eighth inning in his last two.
Drew Hutchison’s spot in the rotation has been a problem. Since he threw a complete-game, 6-0 shutout over the White Sox late in May, he has made five starts that averaged less than five innings per start, with a 5.80 ERA, an opponents BA of .340 and an OPS against of .908. Remarkably, because the Blue Jays have provided him with more run support than any pitcher in baseball, he is 4-1 in that stretch.
The other problem in the rotation is the spot vacated by Aaron Sanchez while he recovers from a strained lat muscle. When all is said and done, he’s probably going to miss at least a month’s worth of starts, maybe more. His fill-ins have been a mixed bag and now it looks as if the Jays might roll the dice with lefty Matt Boyd, who was having a breakout season at New Hampshire and has now pitched two games at triple-A Buffalo with similar results.
Still, the big picture of this crossroads season for GM Alex Anthopoulos and his staff requires they add at least one solid veteran starter and one big arm in the bullpen. Anthopoulos will have to pay for those additions with some of the quality young arms that he has been stockpiling to create a powerful pitching staff for the future.
With Sanchez, Daniel Norris, Marcus Stroman, Jeff Hoffman, Roberto Osuna, Miguel Castro, Hutchison, Boyd and new draftee Jon Harris, the future is bright for Toronto’s starting staff. But they need some quality and experience right now to make 2015 the season that breaks the Blue Jays’ 22-year streak of missing the playoffs.