Stroman takes Hutchison’s starting spot
It took just five innings of Marcus Stroman for the Toronto Blue Jays to confront the problem of Drew Hutchison.
Lugging a 5.33 ERA and 1.44 WHIP as a starter, Hutchison has been banished to the bullpen “for the time being,” pitching coach Pete Walker said Tuesday.
Stroman will take Hutchison’s rotation spot. The 24year-old right-hander made his 2015 debut last Saturday in Yankee Stadium, allowing three runs — all on a Brett Gardner homer — and four hits in five innings.
The moves were hardly surprising. Despite a 13-4 record, Hutchison has been wildly inconsistent all season. Stroman came back strong after March knee surgery and six months of rugged rehab. His one start was sufficient for the first-place Jays in the AL East Division to make a rotation change for the stretch drive.
Hutchison “could” start again in September, “but for this series (against Atlanta) anyway, and moving forward, he’ll be in the ’pen,” Walker said during an interview on Sportsnet 590 The Fan.
Walker was speaking from Atlanta, where the Jays opened a three-game series Tuesday night. Mark Buehrle started that game, with David Price and Marco Estrada to follow. Stroman and R.A. Dickey are lined up to start on Friday and Saturday when the team faces Boston to begin its final homestand of the regular season.
Manager John Gibbons told reporters in Atlanta that he will likely use Hutchison in one-inning appearances.
Discussing his season with media, Hutchison summed it up simply: “It drives me more crazy than you.”
A career starter, Hutchison joins a crowded bullpen. With the expanded September roster, the Jays are carrying 13 relievers. If the game is tight, work will be scarce for Hutchison.
“I’m not going to feel sorry for myself,” he said. “I’m not going to make excuses.”
Buehrle’s health may be the only remaining rotation question mark. He received a cortisone shot in his shoulder last week and was working on seven days’ rest for the second straight start when he took the mound in Atlanta. If the Jays stick to the plan as outlined by Walker, Buehrle would start on the normal four days’ rest on Sunday against the Red Sox.
If Buehrle needs extra time again, Hutchison would fill in.
Toronto has only one off day, Sept. 24, over its final 19 games of the regular season. If the Jays stick to that rotation order and make it to the post-season, Price would line up to start the team’s first playoff game in 22 years.
Stroman held the Yankees hitless over four innings in the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader in the Bronx. In the fifth, he gave up two infield singles and a Gardner homer, then another single before recording the final out. He did not return after a 33-minute rain delay.
“I thought he was great,” Gibbons said after Stroman’s start. “For debuting, and in not ideal conditions either, I thought he looked fantastic.”
As a measure of Hutchison’s inconsistency, consider this: a 6.93 ERA in five July starts, a 2.45 ERA in four August starts and a 12.96 ERA in two September starts. All four of the August starts were at home, where his ERA is 2.91. On the road, it’s 9.44.
His deceptive won-lost record is a result of the best run support in the majors — 8.02 per nine innings.
Estrada, a pleasant surprise for the Jays this year, has already worked a careerhigh 152 1/3 innings, leaving some observers to wonder whether he will wither as playoff time approaches. But over his past nine starts, his ERA is 2.87. He has allowed 10 homers in those starts, however, including six in his past three outings.
On the other side of the ball, the Jays opened the Atlanta series without slugger Edwin Encarnacion in the lineup for the second straight game. On Saturday, for the third time this season, Encarnacion suffered a flare-up of an injury to the middle finger of his left hand.