JEFF BLAIR AUGUST 29, 2016, 9:30 AM
John Gibbons called his starting pitchers into the manager’s office following Saturday’s win over the Minnesota Twins to deliver a message: Stop it. Shut it. Stow it.
OK, so that’s a bit of a simplification and, yeah, maybe a shade dramatic. Got you, right? As one Toronto Blue Jays pitcher said, it was more a matter of the manager reminding all the starting pitchers that the whole six-man rotation setup was brought into place only after all of them signed off on it.
“I think Gibby felt there was a little bitching and moaning going on,” was how it was described to me. “Nothing major, but with Aaron (Sanchez) joining the team this week, he wanted to make sure everybody was on the same page.”
Sanchez, who was sent down to single-A Dunedin to bide his time as part of an innings-management scheme that has forced the other starters to adjust their routines for extra rest, is scheduled to rejoin the Blue Jays and likely pitch Wednesday against the Baltimore Orioles.
The advent of the six-man rotation hasn’t quite been the tire fire that some predicted. Marco Estrada has wobbled since then, but there’s some questions whether that’s because of a balky back or, as was the case in his last start, some good pitches being hit. As it turns out, when general manager Ross Atkins said this was uncharted territory, damn it if he wasn’t correct.