Blue Jays' Merryweather primed for key role after winding start to career

Julian Merryweather making his first appearance of 2021 less than a week before the regular season begins was not how anyone drew it up. But perhaps you’ve noticed things don’t tend to come easily for the Toronto Blue Jays right-hander.

Drafted as a college senior, Merryweather charted a long, deliberate path up Cleveland’s organizational ladder, lost his age-26 season to Tommy John surgery, was traded to Toronto while he was recovering, and then lost most of his age-27 season due to a series of injury complications as he returned to competition.

He pitched in the prospect-laden Arizona Fall League at 28; he made his major-league debut two months prior to his 29th birthday; this year he’ll turn 30 and be eligible to win the Rookie of the Year award. He was born two weeks after Robbie Ray, who has 161 MLB appearances to Merryweather’s eight. He’s a half-decade older than Nate Pearson, who made his MLB debut a month earlier than Merryweather did.

At this point, an extended, healthy stint pitching in the majors — regardless of role or results — would be a positive development. And Merryweather took his first step towards just that Friday, throwing a clean inning in his 2021 debut against the Philadelphia Phillies. It wasn’t his sharpest performance. But it was a start.

“First game — I was a little more amped up than a bullpen or even a backfield sim game,” Merryweather said. “It’s tough — having four pitches, trying to work them all in, trying to work on stuff. I thought my fastball was my best pitch. But I was still trying to work on getting the off-speed over. And it wasn’t as sharp as I’d want it.”

That’s what spring training outings are for — fine-tuning, shaking off the rust. Pitchers have to walk before they run after a long winter away from live game scenarios. You could see it early on as Merryweather nibbled and walked his first batter, Bryce Harper, before falling behind Rhys Hoskins with a slider in the dirt, ultimately finding himself in a full count spot.

But then the mind and muscle memory kicked in, and Merryweather executed a fastball in a perfect location at the bottom of the zone to get the double-play groundball he needed:

“That’s honestly exactly what I was imagining on that pitch. I’m hoping he rolls over on this down-and-away trying to pull it. And it was perfect,” Merryweather said. “I’d been feeling good with all my pitches up to that point. It was just an amped up adrenaline kind of thing — I was overthrowing my slider, pushing the changeup a little bit. But still felt comfortable out there and felt good body-wise.”

Which is what’s most important, considering Merryweather’s injury history and the fact his 2021 debut was delayed due to lower back tightness. He says the issue’s been manageable for a while now and that he feels physically ready to pitch out of Toronto’s bullpen on opening day. There’s no reason to doubt that, but the club may still opt to start the season with Merryweather on the injured list, giving him a couple more opportunities in simulated games to find his sea legs. What’s another week for a guy who waited a half-dozen years to make his MLB debut?

“Last year was great for a lot of guys to get their feet wet — me included,” he said. “Being there against big-league hitters in big-league ballparks — it’s good to just acclimate yourself to that. It takes away a lot of the nerves. … Just to be able to face the true talent of a major-league hitter, there’s nothing that’s going to prepare you for that.”

Perhaps the only thing that’s ever come easily for Merryweather is his velocity. Fastballs erupt from his hand, crossing the plate in the high-90s a split second before hitters might expect, given Merryweather’s smooth, effortless mechanics. He averaged 96.7 mph with his heater last season, surpassing 99 mph on three occasions. This strikeout of J.D. Martinez at Fenway Park was one of those times:

There’s such a nonchalance to his delivery and demeanour — like he’s not even trying. That’s what makes Merryweather such an intriguing prospect despite his age. He throws stuff you can’t teach with a polished mound presence, and if he can put together a healthy season, he could be an extremely valuable piece to a club’s pitching staff in a variety of roles.

Did you notice the other interesting thing about that Martinez strikeout? It came in the fifth inning with two outs, two runners on, and the Blue Jays hanging on to a one-run lead. You may not typically think of the fifth inning as a leverage spot, but in that case it was — a massive one in a game Toronto went on to win by one.

According to FanGraphs leverage index, that Martinez strikeout represented the fourth-highest leverage point of any plate appearance in the game. And the second-highest came a batter earlier, when Merryweather got Xander Bogaerts to fly out with two on and one out. Toronto’s win expectancy swung by more than 20 percentage points with those two outs alone.

It’s an important reminder that leverage exists throughout a ballgame — not only in the eighth and ninth innings. And so, as the Blue Jays construct the bullpen they’ll rely upon early in the season and conceptualize how they’ll navigate various in-game scenarios, they won’t only debate who will protect slim leads in save situations now that Kirby Yates has been lost for the year. They must also surmise who will get important mid-game outs so that there’s a late-inning lead to protect at all.

That’s where a guy like Merryweather can come in. With that huge fastball and a curveball with 60 inches of drop, he features a closer’s stuff. Add in a slider that moves more than the league-average breaking ball, plus a fading changeup that was his best pitch in 2020 producing a wOBA of .087, and turns out he has a starter’s stuff, too. That’s why the Blue Jays asked him to spend the offseason preparing for a starter’s workload. The best possible outcome for all involved would see Merryweather in the rotation, taking two trips through a lineup every five or six days.

But the back injury put a stick in those spokes. And now that time isn’t on their side, the Blue Jays are looking at utilizing Merryweather in a similar fashion to the way he was deployed last season. That is, instead of two trips through every five or six days, how about one trip through every three or four?

Merryweather did exactly that to great effect in 2020, typically asked to record six outs in his appearances, which meant facing anywhere from six to nine batters. For a club reticent to allow starting pitchers to see opposing hitters more than twice in an outing, a leverage reliever with a starter’s repertoire like Merryweather is a must. Someone needs to handle that third trip through and hand things off to the back end of the bullpen. And if that someone has three or four plus pitches rather than only two, they’ll have more ways to get those outs on days when one pitch or another isn’t working.

The nice thing about Merryweather is that the overpowering nature of his stuff makes him an option at the end of games, as well. Or the beginning. He opened three times last season and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him do it again this year, depending on matchups.

Remember, the first inning’s a leverage inning itself. The game’s tied and the top of the batting order is due up. And hitters are as fresh and locked in as they’re going to be. The numbers spell it out. During the 2019 season, hitters put up a .788 OPS and plated 2,814 runs in the opening frame — the highest of any inning.

Which is only one thing about Merryweather’s role this season that won’t be easy. What we see on TV isn’t even half of it. Cameras don’t capture the hours of work between outings to recover quickly and prepare your arm for the next high-intensity sprint. There’s no relating to what it’s like to stay mentally locked in every night, never knowing exactly when you might enter a game. Box scores don’t reflect the times a reliever warms up to enter a game in three consecutive innings but never actually sees the mound — the toll that takes.

“That’s a whole thing I learned last year — you’ve got to learn how to warm up,” Merryweather said. “You can’t just be throwing bullets out in the pen. Because you might not come in right here.”

There’s always something to learn, even for a 30-year-old rookie still trying to get his career off the ground. The eight appearances Merryweather made in 2020 — he pitched to a 107 ERA+ with 15 strikeouts and six walks over 13 innings — were immensely informative and beneficial. He learned how to be an effective reliever; how to manage his arm in shorter stints; how to enter leverage situations throwing strikes. That ought to serve as a platform for Merryweather to build on as he adopts a similar role this season. And with stuff like his, and a career like his, who knows where he might go next?

“It was a little bit of an unknown for me coming out of the bullpen. But once I was able to get through a few outings, I was like, ‘OK, I could definitely get into this,’” he said. “I’m ready to get outs. When you’re in the bullpen and you’re asked to come in at any point, you get a great adrenaline rush. You’re ready to go out and keep the score where it is. Our bullpen has a really good mentality down there. As you saw last year, we put up some pretty good numbers. And it’s going to be exciting to see, with the guys we have there this year, how well we’re able to improve on that.”

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