DUNEDIN, Fla. – A couple weeks ago, when the Toronto Blue Jays signed Jaime Garcia to be the team’s fifth starter, it appeared to push Joe Biagini out of the major-league rotation mix. The discourse surrounding the right-hander quickly morphed – where would he fit best now? Atop triple-A Buffalo’s rotation as a starter or in the major-league bullpen where he had such success in 2016?
Well, not so fast. With Marcus Stroman developing right shoulder inflammation, a setback that has put his status for the beginning of the regular season in jeopardy, Biagini is suddenly very much back in the picture for a major-league rotation job come opening day.
This is why the Blue Jays kept Biagini on a starter’s track after acquiring Garcia, despite the club’s clear need for bullpen reinforcement. Six weeks in Florida is a long time. Someone’s bound to get hurt.
“It always happens – something always happens,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said Wednesday, bemoaning the inevitable injuries spring training bears. “With Stroman we don’t think it’s a big deal, but it’s also concerning. He’s one of our top guys.”
It’s simply too far from opening day to determine whether Stroman will be ready for the beginning of the season or not. He says his goal is to be with the team for “the start of the season.” Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins feels the return is better characterized as “early in the season.” As with all things, it depends.
The good news is the Blue Jays are protected against a potential Stroman absence with Biagini, who threw three innings of one-run ball Wednesday in his second outing of the spring. The 27-year-old ramped up to 40 pitches (28 strikes, six swinging), allowing only a groundball single up the middle and a solo shot, while inducing four outs on the ground, two in the air, and striking out three.
“I thought he was really good,” Gibbons said. “I see a different guy. I see better rhythm to the guy. He’s on a mission.”
Biagini’s trimmed down physically since last season, when he struggled to find consistency over 119.2 innings split between the bullpen and rotation, eventually ending up with a 5.34 ERA. Biagini and the Blue Jays have identified a number of possible causes for those struggles, one of them being his pace on the mound.
Biagini averaged 26.5 seconds between pitches in 2017, the 11th-slowest work rate of any MLB starter to throw at least 80 innings (Biagini threw 88 as a starter). That’s what Gibbons is talking about when he refers to Biagini’s rhythm. The club doesn’t want him getting ahead of himself, but they also don’t want him labouring on the mound as much as he did last season.
One subtle change Biagini has incorporated – an idea raised by Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker – is to come set on the mound with the ball already in his hand, and his hand already in his glove, before he gets his sign from the catcher. He then adjusts the ball appropriately depending on the pitch, and is ready to deliver.
“My goal in the game is not necessarily to try to be faster, but just to have less things to do in between pitches,” Biagini said. “It’s something that you wouldn’t think is super consequential, but it actually kind of speeds up that process a little bit and just keeps it moving. Especially because I want to have a very calm wind-up and not be rushing through that.
“The rest of the increased tempo is just a mindset thing. I’m just attacking. I’m not going to think too much. I’m just going to focus on the spot. And that’s benefitted from a more consistent physical position where you don’t have to worry about as much and try to self-correct in the game.”
The Blue Jays also want Biagini to work more consistently down in the zone, particularly with his fastball. Here’s a look at the location of all the fastballs Biagini threw last season:
Ideally, Biagini and the Blue Jays would like to see that very red square right in the centre – where 6.5 per cent of his fastballs ended up – be much more blue. The more the upper squares are blue, and the more the zone’s bottom row is red, the more groundballs and whiffs Biaigini is likely to generate.
It’s not easy. If every pitcher could locate heaters consistently down in the zone, every pitcher would be pretty good, but it’s an area Biagini’s been working to improve on – and Wednesday’s outing was a positive step.
“I feel like I did that pretty well today,” Biagini said. “There were only a couple pitches I was disappointed with in terms of fastballs. One of them was the home run. … I felt like that was a little bit up. The base hit up the middle was a little bit up. But everything else, I felt like, was pretty good in terms of height.
“You come to find, after pitching enough at a high level, that the mistake you can afford to make is missing down, and missing in and out. That’s better than missing up. Especially for someone like me who has sink on it.”
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Biagini will continue working on these areas and more as he continues to get stretched out over spring. Come the end of March, a decision on his near future will be made. Stroman’s health – and the readiness of the rest of the rotation, for that matter – will have a lot to do with it. If Stroman’s not ready to go, Biagini’s almost certainly in Toronto’s rotation.
If Stroman does recover in time – and Biagini is the odd man out in the major-league rotation mix? Well, then things get interesting.
There’s clearly some disagreement between Blue Jays decision-makers when it comes to where he’s best suited. He was terrific as a multi-inning reliever in 2016, pitching to a 3.06 ERA with a 52 per cent groundball rate, but when you have an athlete like Biagini, with a durable arm and four good pitches, it’s awfully tempting to try and see if he can make it work as a starter.
Gibbons has made it quite clear he’d love to have Biagini available to pitch late in games. Not that he doesn’t see the other side of the argument.
“I think he’d be very valuable to our bullpen,” Gibbons said. “I thought he was one of the better relievers around in his rookie year.
“We all like him and we’re intrigued by what he can maybe do as a starter, but I know what he can do out of the bullpen, you know? And if it makes our bullpen stronger, that’s the route we’ll probably go. If we have some other guys and we don’t need him to do that, then there’s always other options. We need our bullpen to be really good. So, we’ll see where we’re at.”
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