Russell Martin can’t tell you the exact date, but he remembers an afternoon late last summer when he took stock of the standings with a couple of teammates in the Toronto clubhouse. The Blue Jays were under .500 and stuck in the same spot in the American League East they’d occupied all season: last place. Still, the wild card race was so densely packed that the Jays were somehow just a few games out of a playoff spot. Encouraged, Martin turned to Aaron Sanchez. “We still have a puncher’s chance,” he told the 2016 all-star.
For Sanchez, too, that exchange still stands out months later. The focused professionalism that had helped him persevere all year in the face of constant injuries to his pitching hand lapsed for a moment. He hadn’t been able to take the mound in a game since July 19. He knew how much his absence had cost the team, and that his return was no sure thing. The frustration was overwhelming. But looking at the standings with Martin, he was suddenly hit with a competing emotion: excitement at the possibility of contending after months of losing. Who knows, maybe he could contribute out of the bullpen? “I wanted to cry and, like, be so happy in the same sentence,” Sanchez recalls. “That was the hardest part in it all.”
“Sanchie took it like, ‘Damn,’” Martin says. “It can be frustrating; energy-sapping. When you’re a competitor, you want to go out there and compete. When you can’t, you’re just stuck.”
The Blue Jays stayed within three games of a wild card berth as late as August 17, until a sweep by the Cubs at Wrigley Field effectively eliminated them from contention. As their playoff chances vanished, so did any urgency surrounding Sanchez — at least from the team’s standpoint. He didn’t pitch again in 2017. For months, he didn’t even pick up a baseball.
As a new season begins, the stakes surrounding Sanchez are just as high. If he pitches to his potential, the way he did as the 2016 American League ERA leader, the Blue Jays could contend for the post-season. As manager John Gibbons says, “He’s got a chance to be one of the best.” But if Sanchez again finds himself on the disabled list, it’ll be considerably tougher for the Blue Jays to play in October. The stakes are high on a personal level, too. Sanchez’s performance will drive his earnings in arbitration. And, most importantly, this season represents a chance to put a nagging injury behind him and return to the player he’s supposed to be.
Sanchez knows this. He also knows, better than most, how little separates peak performance from non-performance, and how quickly a season can slip away. Facing incredible pressure to return to form in 2018, the 25-year-old has mostly kept quiet and focused on the things he can control. But there are moments when he looks down at his finger, now blister free, and his nail, now grown all the way back, and can’t wait to stand on the mound and compete again. “People will realize,” he says, “when I come back and do what I’m supposed to do, that it’s like I never left.”
Even before 2017, blisters were nothing new for Sanchez. He would often get one toward the end of spring training and deal with it throughout the season. Last year was different, though. By April 16, Sanchez was on the disabled list thanks to a blister on the middle finger of his pitching hand. Two days later, he underwent surgery that sliced his fingernail length-wise to alleviate pressure around the blister. He returned to the mound at the end of the month, only to start visibly bleeding as he pitched. “It was like someone grabbing [my] nail and ripping it out,” he said after the game. The following day he was on the DL again.
Sanchez returned and made two starts in May before trip No. 3 to the disabled list, that time with a finger laceration. Combined with the Blue Jays’ struggles, each early setback wore on Sanchez. As he describes it, “It was like a dagger; It was like one thing after another.”
Back on the mound in July, Sanchez hit the DL again after three starts. He kept trying to work his way back with continued throwing sessions, but the team officially shelved him for the year when he suffered a pulley ligament strain in September. His season totals: eight games and four DL stints. For the first time, Sanchez had spent a summer on the sidelines. “I’m glad I didn’t get [hurt] here,” he says now, gesturing to his elbow, “and I didn’t get here,” pointing to his shoulder. Fair enough. Those injuries would undoubtedly have sidelined him for longer. In a sense, though, a more typical season-ending injury would have been easier to explain. Twelve months of inquiries about his troublesome digit took their own kind of toll. As Sanchez puts it: “I’m so over finger questions.”
He won’t have to answer many of them if the gains he made over the winter hold up. Physically, his finger improved the old-fashioned way; rest followed by a structured throwing program. No more sliced nails required, and no surgery for his damaged ligament. Mentally, he kept things just as simple: He leaned on his family for support, and turned to two trusted coaches. Otherwise, he strove for simplicity and positivity. “[If] I’m happy, teammates are happy, we’re winning, front office is happy, fans are happy. You know what I mean?” he says. “It’s all trickle-down effect. If I can just maintain and do what I need to do, I think everything else just falls into place.”
Unnecessary distractions, in other words, were kept to a minimum. The first step was to relax, and let the noise that had surrounded him for months die down. After a week, he was back in the gym. By early December his finger had improved to the point that he could start playing light catch again from about 60 feet. It was his first time throwing in three months, but he was more excited than nervous. The extended rest he hadn’t allowed himself during the season was doing its part. He could see and feel his finger improving.
The Blue Jays front office and trainers worked with him on a plan that could adjust day by day. Sanchez would drive to the Bobby Mattick training facility in Dunedin every second day to play catch with coaches or minor-leaguers who live in the area. “‘Yo, just get through this,” he would tell himself. “You didn’t lose anything from your body; you didn’t lose anything from yourself. You still know how to do these things, so if you can just get past this, you’ll be back to who you are and who you were in no time.”
Those initial steps built some momentum after a year defined by setbacks. Their simplicity was a welcome counterpoint to the public in-season throwing sessions that were often fodder for talk radio and news articles. Sanchez didn’t post updates for his Twitter or Instagram followers; he opted for privacy as he worked.
Even his conversations with teammates were more friendly check-ins than extended discussions. “Only because I didn’t want to take away from their shit,” Sanchez explains. “They’re here to do a job and I didn’t want them to feel like I’m in their ear complaining. That’s not who I am. If anybody came up to me and wanted to talk about it, I’d talk about it. But I didn’t want to go up to somebody and feel like I’m playing f—ing, ‘poor me, you’ve got to feel sorry for me.’
“I’m sure they’ve got a ton of shit on their plate, too. My thinking is: I’m not going to come in here and add some shit to their plate that they don’t even need … If you’re going to need me as a friend, I’ll be there for you. And same for me. If I needed them, they were there.”
In the end, Sanchez didn’t need his teammates to be close confidantes. He had his agent, Scott Boras, connecting him with the people and information he needed. And he had two coaches, Pete Walker and bullpen coach Dane Johnson, who could discuss the intricacies of pitching with Sanchez, and who knew his history and his personality. “They are 100-per-cent committed and selfless to help our pitching staff,” GM Ross Atkins says of Walker and Johnson. Adds Sanchez: “They were always there.”
Most importantly, so were Sanchez’s girlfriend and his family. He became a father over the winter, so he had plenty to discuss with his mom, dad and brother back home in California. His parents visited in Florida, but mostly they’d talk on the phone, often for hours — “I’m a big FaceTime guy,” Sanchez says.
Everyone was well aware of his injury, of course, but rarely was it the focus of those conversations. “It’s about the day, too, we’re not just talking strictly fingers,” Sanchez explains. “I appreciate them letting me lean on them as much as I did when I needed to the most.”
As Sanchez got comfortable throwing, he started experimenting a little. In 2017, curveballs often aggravated his blister because the pitch requires lots of pressure from the fingertip. But he couldn’t exactly jettison his best off-speed pitch, so he started flipping a few to catcher Luke Maile. At that point they were still on flat ground, but even so, the movement was there. “Put it this way,” Maile says. “Once I saw the way the ball was coming out when he was playing catch, the curveball looked like it was going to be a formality.”
Sanchez progressed to long toss, working methodically to avoid the immediate setbacks that dogged him throughout the 2017 season. To Maile’s eye, his pitches didn’t move quite as sharply as they would during the regular season. His command wasn’t as precise, either. That’s to be expected after a long layoff, though. Sanchez checked the most important box: He looked healthy. “That was pretty much when I stopped worrying,” says Maile, who would make the trip from his home in nearby Palm Harbor. “There’s a look when it’s coming out properly and somebody feels good, and there’s a look to it when someone’s grinding. From the start, even just playing catch with him, you could tell he felt good.”
Sanchez returned to the mound for the first time in late January. It was a chance to rediscover the basics and build up stamina for the season. With each passing bullpen session, he gained confidence that 2018 really would be different. “His state of mind is as good as it’s ever been,” Walker says. “He’s always been focused coming into spring training, but maybe this year, maybe he has a little edge.”
Atkins agrees: “You see his focus, his drive, his energy. He’s never lacked in those areas, but when you deal with something as frustrating as the year he had last year, it takes a toll on guys. He’s in a great frame of mind.”
By the time the rest of the Blue Jays’ pitchers showed up to spring training, Sanchez was ahead of schedule. Gradually, he faced new tests — live batting practice, his first Grapefruit League game, his first spring start. Each time, he had to answer for his finger; each time, he described it as a non-issue. “You just play the game, and if you get hurt, you get hurt,” he said early this spring. “I have to go out and be myself and maximize my talent, and if this thing goes [south], then we’ll have to assess.” And the curve that caused troubles in 2017? Moving as well as ever. “It’s special, man,” says Maile. “Special.”
Maintenance is blessedly simple: Sanchez trims the nail before every start or bullpen session, and makes sure the skin atop his middle finger doesn’t harden too much. Aside from that, he hasn’t had to worry. “I think for him the peace of mind’s been big,” Gibbons says.
Watching Sanchez mix a 95-mph fastball with a hard-breaking curve and a change-up in Florida this spring, he looks like the same guy who posted a 3.00 ERA in 2016. And by and large he is that pitcher. At the same time, though, he senses a difference in himself. Something earned in the last, frustrating year of his life. “Just the patience part,” he says. “Understanding the big picture. I think that’s a big deal.”
“There were things that he was not able to do physically last year, and he channelled a lot of that [unspent energy] into ways to think about his career,” Atkins adds. “He’s as focused as any player we have.”
Sanchez considers himself a stronger person for having gone through the struggles of 2017. He hopes he’s a better teammate, too. That said, for the Blue Jays to contend, they need Sanchez to do more than provide support to the rest of the clubhouse — they need him to be an effective pitcher.
After months of rehab, he’s consciously focusing on staying grounded, well aware of how much work awaits him and how little it takes to stall this building momentum. But make no mistake, he’s excited too. “It’s the fun part now,” he says. “What I love about the game most is competing. It’s me versus every one of you. Who’s it going to be?
“I can’t wait.”
The idea of pitching without limitations appeals to him not only because of what happened last year, but because of what preceded it. The Blue Jays handled him cautiously as a prospect, and talk of an innings limit followed him from start to finish during his first full season. In 2018, he aims to work into the seventh and eighth inning consistently. But, specific targets aside, he loves the idea of simply pitching.
All winter Sanchez stayed focused with that goal in mind. All spring, he has been wary of getting too far ahead of himself. But here and there he allows himself a moment to dream a little about what he and his team might do. “Hopefully we are in the playoffs,” he says. “And man, I want to be the dude that puts the f—ing team on my back and pitches us to the playoffs. Who wouldn’t?”
