Coming off a spectacular season, the American League East-champion Toronto Blue Jays have run out to an underwhelming 10-13 start in 2016.
However, president Mark Shapiro is not ready to say the sky is falling.
Shapiro joined the Jeff Blair Show on Sportsnet 590 The FAN on Thursday and preached the idea of patience when it comes to evaluating a team’s position.
“I work hard not to draw any conclusions until 40 games in,” Shapiro said. “Everything is amplified early in the season, just because of the number of games you’ve played.
“The most fortunate thing that’s happened is that the division is pretty wide open. We are not where we want to be, let me make that clear. Nobody is happy with 10-13, nobody is satisfied with where we are. What is probably most advantageous to where we are is that we’re going to have time to sort it out and get better.”
An offence that led MLB by 127 runs a year ago has been mostly quiet through 23 games, but another area of sizeable concern has been the bullpen. Toronto’s relief corps rank 12th in the AL with a 4.03 ERA, and has allowed 19 of 37 inherited runners to score.
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Shapiro is well aware of the struggles, but understands the volatility that comes when assembling a group of relievers.
“The most concerning trend is the bullpen, but the bullpen is an area that is constantly a work in progress and almost always needs to be adjusted and tweaked as a season goes along. It’s the least consistent, reliable area of building a major-league team from year to year.
“It’s a work in progress. We need to give guys time to settle in and get comfortable, see if they can get in a rhythm and make adjustments but at some point, when it comes to bullpens, you just don’t have quite the same dependability and reliability as a position player that has a track record of hitting.”
One possible solution to bolstering the area would be to move 23-year-old Aaron Sanchez to late-inning duties. Sanchez has started four games this season, with three of them being outstanding performances. He has made 54 career relief appearances, pitching to a 1.67 ERA.
While it seems like a plausible immediate fix, moving the right-hander to the bullpen would be concerning to Shapiro because of the message it would send.
“He’s certainly been very good as a starter and we don’t want to create a culture and environment where we’re jerking guys and reacting to short-term results and creating instability,” Shapiro said. “You have very few major-league teams and very few major-league organizations that have any capability of sustaining success when players feel like there is no foundation and have no idea what to expect each day when they come to the ballpark.”
