Loup quirky link to past — the good, bad and ugly
DUNEDIN, FLA.— His surname means wolf in French: Aaron Loup. “I like that.” Very Louisianan, though he’s not sure if there’s Cajun in his blood. But there’s bayou Cajun in his lifestyle — bow-andarrow hunting, fishing. Distinctly Louisiana in his accent. And big city leery. “When we go to New York, I can’t stand that it’s utter chaos. Most of the time I don’t even leave the hotel.”
Kind of The Big Easy in pitching too, out of the ’pen.
Which is why Loup has always been a reliever, back to high school days, growing up not far from New Orleans. “For me, relieving was always my strong point. I’ve been blessed to be able to bounce back quickly, so I can pitch back-to-back games, back-to-back-toback if I needed to.’’
He laughs. “My attention span isn’t all there, staying locked in for seven innings is not my strong suit.
“Getting in there for one inning kind of matched my personality.”
Definitely laid-back and a tad quirky, as becomes a southpaw. “Yup, being a lefty always helps. That’s what I tell the guys. I’m lucky to be left-handed. Lefties got nine lives around here.’’
’Round baseball, he means, where portsiders with even a modicum of talent can find pitching jobs pretty much until their arms fall off.
Loup is a career Blue Jay, drafted by Toronto in the ninth round in 2009. That’s 51⁄ 2 seasons of big-league service. (Debut, July 14, 2012, straight from Double-A New Hampshire, retiring half a dozen Indians.) When Toronto chose not to pick up Jose Bautista’s option last November, Loup was left as the longest-tenured Jay in the clubhouse, if not with high-wattage status. That probably carries more weight among the moundsmen, with Loup transitioning into the ’pen-daddy role that was formerly held by Jason Grilli.
“I kind of feel like it’s going to be me,” Loup muses about the patriarchal status, the job of setting the tone in the bullpen. “Longest tenured Blue Jay, it almost forces my hand a bit. Which I don’t mind ’cause I like keeping everybody loose and having fun.’’
There wasn’t a whole lot of fun last year, T-boned as the Jays were right out of the hop with a miserable April from which the team never recovered en route to a second-last finish in the American League East, just one game up on Baltimore.
“Yeah, got off to a rough start. Injuries had a lot to do with that.’’
Of course, losing seasons was all Loup had known as a Jay.
“One of the most surprising things for me, because we were always bad when I first got called up, was making the playoffs back-to-back years and then pushing it all the way to the ALCS. That was something I’d never experienced before, never really expected the first few seasons. So, pretty shocking for me, actually.
“I mean, we just weren’t very good in those early years and nothing was really expected of us.’’
Loup is rather a receptacle of history around the clubhouse, albeit just 30 years old. Many of his teammates had never known the bitterness of missing the postseason. It was all fun and games and playoffs, so 2017 landed with a thud. That’s why Loup has so savoured the success of 2015 and 2016.
“The whole culture changed with the guys we brought in, Russ Martin, Josh Donaldson, Troy Tulowitzki, the J.A. Happs and the Marco Estradas. Once they got here and we started winning, we expected to win. We expected to do big things.”
Loup’s personal road has hardly been smooth. There were periods when, when he emerged from the ’pen, you could practically hear a groan emanating from the Rogers Centre crowd. Yet manager John Gibbons continued to lean on him, if often because he had few options, particularly pitching from the left side. Loup’s numbers last season were hardly boldface: a 3.75 ERA in 70 games with a 2-3 record but a decent 64 Ks. Toronto signed him to a one-year, $1.8-million U.S. contract for 2018. But his role has never been sharpetched defined, apart from facing left-handed hitters and one-inning workloads. Durable though, as he says, and rarely on the DL.
Loup definitely will leave Florida with a bullpen job. The no-doubters are closer Roberto Osuna, Danny Barnes, Ryan Tepera, Seunghwan Oh — if he ever gets his damn visa — presumably Tyler Clippard, signed last week, and probably John Axford, who’s impressed. That’s seven, which is what Gibbons wants, leaving the likes of Luis Santos on the outside looking in and Joe Biagini starting in Buffalo, though he was a bullpen horse in 2016.
“The bullpen is developing nicely,’’ says Loup. “Coming into camp we had a few spots open so I wasn’t exactly sure what they had planned. But we have a lot of young arms we can count on, guys we saw last year, who can come up and help us out. We’ve acquired some good veteran arms that have pitched well in camp.’’’
Just get through April — often an adventure for the Gibbons-managed Jays — and Bob’s your uncle, right? Loup grins knowingly. “The first month with Gibby is always a period of figuring things out. But I think we’re going to be all right.”