Blue Jays get creative with starting rotation as games grow in meaning

PITTSBURGH – Gifted with off-days ahead of this weekend’s three-game series against the Pittsburgh Pirates and after the four-game set at the Baltimore Orioles that follows, the Toronto Blue Jays decided to get a little creative with their starting rotation.

A bullpen day with Trevor Richards starting on Saturday, pushing Ross Stripling back to Sunday, which sets up both Jose Berrios and Kevin Gausman for Monday’s important doubleheader at Camden Yards. Mitch White can then follow on Tuesday with Alek Manoah getting the finale against the Orioles on Wednesday. If the goal is optimizing the rotation for a key series against a division rival on your tail in the wild-card standings, well that’s about as close as they could get.

“That's part of it, for sure,” said interim manager John Schneider. “It’s easy to say, OK, you're taking a non-division opponent or someone you're not kind of right in the thick of a race with differently. That's not the case. You take matchups into consideration as well with how their lineup rolls out and who we have available. That plays a part of it as well. But when you're at this point in the season, too, and you know, you are right there with a handful of teams and you're playing them quite a bit, you want to line up your guys against that team.”

Key to pulling it all together, however, was Manoah doing exactly what he did in Friday night’s series-opening 4-0 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates before a crowd of 18,057 at picturesque PNC Park. The big man shoved as usual, but not only did he keep the game in check while waiting for the offence to break through, he also gave Schneider maximum flexibility for Saturday’s bullpen game by logging 7.1 shutout frames, allowing five hits and a walk with six strikeouts.

A nightmare scenario would have been him failing to get deep in the opener and taxing the bullpen, forcing the Blue Jays to rely heavily on the erratic Yusei Kikuchi and September callup Casey Lawrence to get the job done Saturday. Instead, they can now line up as they please, with enough fresh arms to cover all nine frames with their best relievers alone, if they so choose.

In that sense, Manoah continues to rise to the occasion in ace-like ways for the Blue Jays (71-59). Even if he was only facing the lowly Pirates (49-82), one need only to look back at the past two series against the Angels and Cubs to find a timely reminder of the perils in taking weaker opponents for granted.

To some extent, in spite of Schneider’s protestations, the Blue Jays are doing that with Saturday’s bullpen game at a time when each game is so impactful in the standings. Manoah helped mitigate the risk with a putting-the-team-on-his-back start.

“Definitely,” Manoah said of trying to be a leader for the team. “Just being able to go out there and set the tone for the weekend, give the bullpen a nice rest, and let some of those guys kind of catch up on some of the recovery and let them go eat up some innings the rest of the weekend, you know? It's definitely something I look forward to doing down the stretch.”

Now, the offence could have significantly eased the leverage he had to pitch through given its many opportunities to pop this game open. But the Blue Jays loaded the bases in both the third and eighth innings only to come up empty both times, gave up two outs on the basepaths and, after Santiago Espinal’s decisive two-run double in the fourth, were robbed of two more runs when Oneil Cruz gobbled up Teoscar Hernandez’s chopper in the 5-6 hole and relayed to first for the out.

All that meant that after Manoah surrendered a one-out single to former teammate Tyler Heineman in the eighth, Schneider called in Tim Mayza to escape trouble in a 2-0 game, which he did by striking out Cruz and Rodolfo Castro to end the inning.

Bo Bichette’s two-run homer in the top of the ninth finally provided some breathing room before Adam Cimber wrapped the win up in the bottom half.

"When we score like that and we (provide) some run support, it makes the game a lot easier," said Espinal. "Especially with Manoah, a guy who's going to go out there and be aggressive, be quick and throw a lot of strikes. It was all about Manoah today. He did a great job and can't (wait) to see him again."

Another off day next Thursday will help the Blue Jays reset to some extent for the unusual five-game series at home against the Tampa Bay Rays next week, which includes a Tuesday doubleheader. 

Stripling can pitch the opener against the Rangers and assuming Gausman gets the Saturday game in Texas instead of Berrios, he can come back to pitch the finale against the Rays the following Thursday, with Berrios getting the opener of the return engagement versus the Orioles on Friday. Manoah could pitch either the Monday opener versus the Rays or in the Tuesday twin bill, with White slotting in around him. More creativity will be needed to cover one of the doubleheader games. 

Hence, there’s more juggling to come, which is fine with Gausman.

“Knowing that the post-season is not guaranteed ever, I'm on board with pitching me whenever you need to if you think that's going to give us an advantage to win against a certain team,” said Gausman. “I feel confident pitching any one of our five guys but if they think I line up against Tampa, or want to skip me so that I face those teams, I understand. As a fan of baseball, I remember watching CC Sabathia when he was with Milwaukee (in 2008) and he essentially just put them on his back and was like I'll pitch on three days rest. The last week of the season, he did that three times. That's what you've got to do sometimes. So I'm on board with whatever. If you want to bring me in for a ninth inning, I'm game. I'll pitch whenever they tell me.”

In these all hands-on-deck days, everything is on the table and the first machinations of this meaningful month worked, thanks in large measure to Manoah.