TORONTO, Ont. – Call it hubris, call it confidence, call it just plain being spoiled, but when there’s a rookie’s name pencilled in as the starting pitcher against the Blue Jays these days, you get the feeling it’s going to be a painful day for the kid. And the overwhelming majority of the time, that feeling has been bang on.
Buck Farmer drew the short straw Saturday afternoon, and the 24 year-old got knocked around early, and was long gone by the time the Jays, led by Edwin Encarnacion’s historic day at the plate, made things utterly ridiculous in rolling to their seventh win in eight games and 23rd in 28.
The Jays almost hit for the cycle off Farmer in the very first inning, with a single from Josh Donaldson, a double by Justin Smoak and a three-run homer by Encarnacion combining with a walk to Jose Bautista. Edwin’s big blast – his first of three on a club-record-tying 9 RBI day – extended his hit streak to a career-high 24 games, the longest in the major leagues this season.
They scored in every inning Farmer pitched, knocking him out after four. He allowed six runs (five earned) on five hits.
The Blue Jays have faced a rookie starting pitcher 21 times this season. They have had trouble with three of them.
Nathan Karns threw six shutout innings at the Jays in St. Petersburg in a game the Jays eventually won 1-0 in 12 innings. Noah Syndergaard shut them down over six, allowing a run on two hits in a game the Jays lost in extras at Citi Field to end their first 11-game win streak this season. And the Phillies’ Adam Morgan has beaten them twice, once allowing two runs in six innings, the other time allowing two runs in seven.
The rest of the time, it’s been kind of a massacre.
The other 17 rookie starters the Blue Jays have faced, including Farmer and ex-Jay Matt Boyd, who started the opener of the weekend series, have managed to last a total of just 74 frames – an average of 4 1/3 innings per start. They have allowed 78 earned runs over that span for an ugly 9.49 ERA, and the 94 hits and 41 walks allowed have added up to a WHIP of 1.824.
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It’s gotten even worse since the roster makeover at the trade deadline. In the month of August alone, the Blue Jays have made mincemeat out of Tyler Duffey, Kendall Graveman, Aaron Brooks, Luis Severino, Aaron Nola, and Andrew Heaney along with Boyd and Farmer. They’ve won eight of the nine games started by rookies this month, and those rookie starters have posted an 11.61 ERA and 2.161 WHIP in averaging less than four innings per start. They faced Morgan once and lost.
The Blue Jays are 15-2 in games started by rookies not named Karns, Morgan or Syndergaard, and the two losses have come against rookie pitches (Matt Andriese of the Rays, Boston’s Eduardo Rodriguez) that they have beaten the other time they saw them this year.
If you fold in the numbers of the three rookies with whom the Jays have had trouble this season, they’re 16-5 when facing a starting freshman, and all rooks combined have posted a 7.55 ERA against this juggernaut, with a WHIP of 1.576.
Cody Anderson is next on the list, scheduled to start for Cleveland at Rogers Centre on September first. He might want to think about coming down with the flu.
