Grilli not at his best, nor at best-before date
Forty-year-old Jays reliever has been through baseball’s valleys and landed on the hill before
ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.— As of Saturday afternoon, Jason Grilli had put 653 1/3 innings on his meal-ticket right arm.
That’s bonus miles for a pitcher. According to the most recent academic analysis, the average career life span for an MLB pitcher is 4.8 years. Grilli is well into his second decade on the mound, Toronto is his ninth team, and he celebrated his 40th birthday in November, around the time Jays picked up his $3million option. The decision to bring him back was a no-brainer, even for a brain trust of questionable baseball IQ.
Still, how long can Grilli go? The question has taken on urgency as the bullpen statesman slips out of his set-up role.
“I don’t have an odometer on this thing,” he snorts. “Why, do you have an expiration date for me?”
The emotional lodestone of the Blue Jays bullpen, dramatically demonstrative on the mound, Grilli gets his back up when an inquisitor noses around under the pitching hood.
That arm had been purring along like, oh, a 2008 Ford Crown Victoria. Not a year chosen at random because, in fastball terms, Grilli was averaging 92.3 m.p.h. in ’08. Which is exactly what he averaged last season.
The purr has developed a worrisome ping in 2017, though. “I’m still throwing 95.” Indeed. The last ball Grilli hurled in competitive snarl before Saturday was in the Bronx last Tuesday: a 95.1 four-seamer over the plate that Aaron Judge blasted over the centre-field wall for three runs in the Yankees’ 11-5 lambasting of the Jays. Double, walk, homer and Grilli was all done, having got nobody out.
Last season, following his May trade acquisition from Atlanta, that would have been an anomaly. While assuming leadership of the bullpen, by virtue of personality and veteran bona fides, Grilli was a brilliant pick-up for the Jays, as if restored to the hurler of youth, only a year removed from a ruptured Achilles tendon.
In 42 innings, he had an ERA of 3.64 with 58 strikeouts. There was a September wobble — 10 earned runs, 9.64 ERA for the month — but Grilli righted himself in the postseason and didn’t surrender a run in five playoff appearances, allowing just one hit through 3 2/3 innings.
He had been asked, last fall, if he was tired, on the slippery side of 39. He was asked the same thing at spring training a few months ago. Shaky out of the gate this season, he was queried about his 40-year-old arm again on the weekend in St. Pete’s, after manager John Gibbons confirmed Grilli would be limited to low-leverage situations for the next little while and divested of eighth inning status — except, as in yesterday’s 6-1 loss to the Rays, when the eighth is a deck-swabbing irrelevance.
Grilli, entering the game with a 10.38 ERA over 8 2/3 innings, had a heck of time trying to find the strike zone — he issued back-to-back walks and allowed an unearned run on a short-hop throw to the plate from Devon Travis on a fielder’s choice, He also had a pair of Ks and a flyball out. The entire frame was a 39-pitch struggle.
The culprit behind Grilli’s blowsy earned run average — five runs in his previous two outings, 1-3 with a blow save — is a slider that has lost its bite.
“He’s missing that wrist snap on his slider,” says pitching coach Pete Walker.
In Grilli’s terse analysis: “What’s wrong with it? It’s being hit. It’s not being located.”
The corners have become optical illusion targets. Grilli is getting ensnared by long at-bats and hitters’ counts.
“The effort’s there, my mind is there. Sometimes things don’t go your way in this game. You can give up three laser beams to shortstop and think that, ‘Hey, I did a good job.’ You can sit there and laugh that you put up a zero that day. But this game has a way of evening itself out.
“I’m just trying to find myself. And I’ve had outings where I have been
“I’ve risen from the ashes many times. So I will always bet on me.” JASON GRILLI ON HIS MOUND STRUGGLES
myself.”
“It’s not on-the-field stuff,” he say, adding hastily, “It’s not a personal matter either. It’s something I will get to.’’
Definitely not an injury, no apparent soreness.
“This is the same conversation we were having in September last year. What’s the reason now? What was the reason then, because we were throwing almost every day.’’
The numbers are always somewhat skewed for relievers, especially in early May sample sizes.
“Your numbers are the report card but they don’t always tell the story,” says Grilli.
“I’m not looking for any excuses. I have my reasons. I know what I have to fix.’’
Gibbons is adamant that, if the Jays have any hope of reversing a hideous start, they’ll need a sharp Grilli restored to eighth-inning chops.
“We’ve got to get him back on track,” the manager says.
If filler inning business might not turn Grilli’s crank, he’s not grumbling.
“I take the ball when it’s given to me,” he says. “I went from being an all-star starter to closer to pitching the sixth inning for the Anaheim Angels. I don’t need a role to define me. My track record speaks for itself.
“I’ve risen from the ashes many times. So I will always bet on me.”