Thornton delivers win and message in Houston
It was admittedly a little weird for Trent Thornton when the right-hander made his majorleague debut in Toronto in March, wearing a Blue Jays jersey.
Thornton came up through the Houston Astros system, selected by the American League West team in the fifth round of the 2015 draft. He spent almost two full seasons honing his craft with the Astros’ Triple-A affiliate, the Fresno Grizzlies, biding his time for that elusive bigleague opportunity.
If Thornton’s wait with the Astros was lengthy, his chance at the big leagues with the Jays was anything but. The 25-yearold was traded to Toronto for shortstop Aledmys Diaz last November. He went to spring training as a candidate for the rotation and broke camp with the team, starting the fourth game of the season against the Detroit Tigers.
“And boom, just like that, I made my debut,” Thornton said earlier this year.
“All that time with Houston, obviously I loved that organization and they were awesome, but just kind of logjammed over there. I thought I was deserving of an opportunity. A lot of guys are over there, but they just have so much talent. Guys like (Justin) Verlander, (Gerrit) Cole, now they’ve got (Wade) Miley. They’ve just got plenty of arms.” When the phone rang in November, Thornton thought it might be to tell him he was being placed on the 40-man roster of one of the best teams in baseball, not traded away from the only organization he had ever known.
So it’s easy to see why the bespectacled starter, now with 14 big-league starts under his belt, felt he had something to prove at Minute Maid Park on Sunday.
Thornton did just that in a 12-0 win over the Astros, in which he held the AL leaders scoreless for 62⁄ innings — his second-longest outing of the season. He struck out seven with an effective mix of pitches, featuring the high-end curveball he developed with help from Houston’s advanced analytics — averaging an elite 2,862 revolutions per minute — and slider.
Performances like Sunday’s show what the Jays were on to when they dealt for Thornton last fall. At the time, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow said the pitcher was on the radar of several teams.
“We felt that this represented a good opportunity to use an area of depth to acquire a player that can be part of our pitching core,” Jays GM Ross Atkins said of the Thornton-Diaz swap back then.
Losing Diaz, who played 130 games at shortstop and third base last season, was more than offset by the acquisition of freeagent shortstop Freddy Galvis on a one-year deal, Eric Sogard — hitting .291 after a 2-for-3 Sunday — on a minor-league contract and eventually the call-up of phenom Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Adding pitching depth was a priority for the front office in the off-season and remains an area of need despite Thornton’s success. The Jays are reportedly open to offers for right-handers Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez, while left Ryan Borucki (elbow) has yet to pitch this season.
The challenge for Thornton going forward will be consistency. He has struggled with walks — at least three in eight of his starts, including Sunday’s — which has contributed to a bloated average of 18 pitches per inning and kept him from working as deep into games as the Jays would like.
For now, Thornton will savour a Father’s Day win over his old team, a game his dad Jeff was able to catch from the stands.
“You’re just playing against a bunch of your friends, so you want to do better than them,” Thornton told reporters in Texas. “That was a lot of fun.”