Krylian

Man... This team is striking out a f*** ton so far. I know it's just three games but I'm not liking it so much.

I like him too but posts like this will just get thrown back in your face as soon as he struggles. We're all on the same team here.

Swing and a miss, strike three. Sit down, bitch!

Breaking ball, swing and a miss strike two

Big out.

Swing and a miss he struck him out!

It needs to be at least 94 before they can hit it.

It's official now: Aaron Sanchez, who pitched mostly in relief for the Toronto Blue Jays last season, is back in the starting rotation and will start Tuesday night's game against the Tampa Bay Rays. He has wanted this for quite a while, if only to quiet the hounding media ("Stop pounding me with questions," he recently told John Lott of Blue Jays Nation). Between the majors and minors, Sanchez has 58 relief appearances and 34 starts in the past two years. But the fact that only 11 of those starts have come in the big leagues is not the only reason many consider him a reliever first and a starter second. First of all, he has been lights-out as a reliever (0.78 WHIP) and subpar as a starter (1.44 WHIP, 37 walks, 42 K's in 66 innings). But there's more to it than that. Given what we've seen of his stamina, his command and his arsenal, there are legit reasons to think this won't work out. Then again, if you look at what Sanchez has done recently to address each of these issues, the thought of him being a starter is a lot more conceivable. It's those things that president/CEO Mark Shapiro and his front-office team in Toronto must have heard about when they canvassed 20 people in the organization to get feedback on their decision. So what has Sanchez done that makes him a good fit as a starting pitcher? Stamina Sanchez faces quite a catch-22: How can he build the stamina to be a starter if he has to be a starter to get the stamina? Maybe it's a little unfair to ask this about Sanchez, but his career high in innings in a season -- 133 1/3 innings in 2014 -- suggests it's unlikely he can throw 200 innings this season. It would be much easier for the team to just place him back in a relief role and enjoy the lights-out trio they'd have (along with Roberto Osuna and Drew Storen) at the back end of their bullpen. After all, that's what all the cool teams are doing these days. There is a decent number of successful "innings-light" pitchers in the majors, such as Francisco Liriano, but for the most part, teams expect innings-eaters. It goes beyond just previous innings, though. Sanchez is 6-foot-4 with long levers that he sometimes struggles to put in the right places at times. That's why he has a walk rate that's 25 percent worse than league average so far in his career, and that's why many scouts have thought all along that he'd be in the bullpen, where it's easier to keep your mechanics in check in shorter stretches. With Sanchez, the stamina ties in directly with pitch efficiency, throwing strikes and keeping his pitch count as low as possible. While that has been a problem for him as a starter (13.2 percent walk rate), at least now we know he can be efficient as a reliever (7.3 percent walk rate). It's just a matter of taking that approach to his starting gig. Also worth noting: In his starts last season, Sanchez did maintain his fastball velocity; he averaged 94 mph in the first inning and 93.5 in the fifth inning. It's easy to doubt Sanchez by looking at past relievers-turned-starters -- the list is pretty grim if you focus on Daniel Bard, Neftali Feliz, Alexi Ogando and Joba Chamberlain -- but Sanchez has the goods to take his better control to the starting role, which should lead to a lower pitch count and thus better stamina. Command This one is just as important, if not more so. First of all, let's settle this: There is no relationship between height and fastball velocity or strikeout rate, at least not one the numbers can uncover when examining major league pitchers. There is also no relationship between height and walk rate at the big league level, a thing that many scouts would doubt. Now, that data may be flawed, considering many young, tall and lanky kids don't even reach the bigs if they haven't shown he can command his pitches. In any case, Sanchez is here, and the point is there's no reason a tall guy like him couldn't have good command. But first he needed to do two things. The first was to get bigger. Sanchez went to Duke and trained with the same people who helped Marcus Stroman come back from his ACL injury so quickly. Sanchez added 20 pounds of muscle, and that has been helping him repeat his delivery better. As he told Lott: "I know a lot of people may say 20 pounds might not be anything, but my delivery just comes so seamlessly now," he says. "Before I was thinking too much out there, worried about whether I'm in the right position. This year it comes so much more natural. When I'm out there, it's about executing pitches, it's not, 'Hey, am I in the right spot in my delivery to execute those pitches?' I've done everything right to this point." A starter's objective is to repeat the same mechanics over and over again, and all the reports are saying that he's doing that better with the added weight. He also made an important change to his mechanics: Now he's bigger and repeating a simplified delivery better. This spring, he walked only three of the 78 batters he faced, a rate that's about twice as good as the league average. And he went from looking like this to looking like this. Arsenal Even if we feel he'll quickly build the stamina to be a reliable starter and improve his command based on the physical and mechanical changes, there's also the issue that, so far in his career, he has been mostly a two-pitch pitcher. Drew Fairservice at Jays Nation went even further, calling him a one-pitch pitcher, and he has a good point: Sanchez's curveball, his secondary pitch, has not rated as above-average in terms of whiff and ground ball rates so far in his career. Even if you give him the curve, there are very few sinker/curve starters in the big leagues; it's basically just Charlie Morton and Ivan Nova. That led Fairservice to conclude that Sanchez should probably relieve. But Sanchez has been developing his changeup, and it's not unreasonable to think he'll throw it more as a starter. He'll need to turn over the lineup a time or two, and that will require throwing different pitch types. When he started early last year, he threw the change only 7 percent of the time. That's not a lot, but enough to give us some data on the pitch. First of all, Sanchez's changeup has above-average movement, along with average velocity with respect to his fastball. The most similar changeup to his in those terms is the one thrown by Carlos Martinez last year, which got great results. Not surprisingly, Sanchez has gotten whiffs once every five times he has thrown the pitch, which is comfortably above average. Or maybe it would be more beneficial to simply get a look at the pitch, courtesy of @GideonTurk: That's nasty stuff right there. If you give Sanchez a high-velocity sinker with elite rates, an above-average curveball and an above-average change, you have what sounds like at least an above-average pitcher. From that description, the Carlos Martinez comparison gets even better -- and that is the upside driving the Blue Jays to give Sanchez a shot. After all, Martinez just threw 180 innings of lights-out baseball for the Cardinals last year, and the Blue Jays' rotation could use that sort of shot in the arm. And, just as Martinez made a few adjustments to put himself in the position to pitch well last year, Sanchez has made those adjustments and is ready to shine once every five days, at least until the team decides its needs to protect his arm for the future.

I think if you compare all 8 (non-pitching) positions, this years team takes it.

5.2 IP 5 H 3 ER 3 BB 3 K 67% GB Rate Jays win 8-4.

I think a lot of players that didn't want to play for the Jays in 2014 have since changed their minds if you were to ask.

I don't think comparing Sanchez to Stro is fair. I don't think it's fair to compare any of our starters to Stro...because most likely they'll pale in comparison. That would be the case with any rotation being compared to their ace. If you view Sanchez as a 3. Compare him to other 3's and see where he lines up. Maybe he's a 4...maybe he's a 5. Hell...maybe he'll be our 2. All I know is the kid has some natural raw ability....and I'm hoping he's able to put it together and help steer this team to the promised land in October.

Hasn't our Farm System been pretty highly regarded for most of AA's regime? That's not because of his predecessor.

WTF are you talking about.

Still have to give credit for identifying the talent.

Winning the first two games against TBay feels like.... http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb321/snumb77/gifs/motorboat-o.gif

http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/A_IlktuHewLY2O.Mh5B1pA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztxPTg1O3c9MzIw/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/Sports/ap/201510192232811649651

http://www.citynews.ca/wp-content/blogs.dir/sites/10/2015/09/18/0918alomar.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r1GuX7YsWDc/T5Iq_d9TdjI/AAAAAAAADo0/qhzN9Gy6j18/s1600/Bau-Five.gif

Examples?

f***ing Pentecost!

Tepera will have plenty of time with the Jays this year. Injuries will happen. Underperformance will happen. He'll be up, possibly before April is even through.

Only Pittsburgh has a better run differential than the Jays in 2016.

*they* ...I'm looking for fault in any situation.

One down. Next!!