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Then he's gone for over 2 weeks. Maybe a certain young hurler in AAA could come up to take his place as a multi inning reliever, although I don't know if the team would want to instantly throw him into the fire in close games or not without first getting his feet wet.

That's an imperfect solution as well as Lauer would have needed to stay in Buffalo for 15 days outside of an injury to another pitcher.

Berrios didn't pitch well, but you can't ignore the fact that the extra out directly contributed to 4 extra runs that inning that shouldn't have crossed the plate. He was already likely pretty fatigued at that point as his pitch count was very high, and the extra out forced him to throw more pitches before receiving some rest in the dugout. Most of the rotation is pitching well recently aside from Berrios. It's a pretty easy decision in my view to keep Berrios off of the post season roster, but even if he makes the roster it's very unlikely that he would receive any starts. The bullpen is starting to look a lot better in recent outings as well. They have a ways to go before we can say they've put the August struggles behind nearly everyone aside from Little has looked much better their last few times out which is at least a potential starting point to better fortunes moving forward.

I thought the collective thought here was that skipping Lauer's start last turn through the rotation was entirely why he pitched so badly and that skipping a start in the rotation was guaranteed to lead to a poor start the next time around.

Buck and the other old school catchers are simply out of touch with what the modern data has to say about catching on a single knee. The article I'm sharing should be required for every single ex catcher that's been harping away constantly about how bad catching on a knee is as it's been definitively shown that catching on a single knee is actually far more effective. https://www.mlb.com/news/explaining-the-one-knee-down-catching-stance It's not even a case where the catchers should be altering their stance with a runner on third either despite what the dinosaurs are trying to tell you.

The dinosaur's don't understand the reality of catching on a knee. It improves their ability to frame pitches, has actually been shown to reduce the overall number of passed balls/wild pitches, and dramatically lessens the wear and tear on the catcher's knees and hips. This is allowing the best catchers to catch more frequently and may even extend their careers as well. It's win/win/win/win despite what the old school catchers incorrectly believe.

No the team did not want to throw the game Eyeore. The poor showing from Berrios was concerning to be certain, but if IKF didn't make a poorly timed error that would have erased 4 runs from the Reds total for the game and it likely never would have been close. The bullpen pitched pretty well as a whole only allowing 3 runs over 7 innings of work.

I've seen calls in other online Blue Jays discussions to move Lauer into more of a lefty leverage kind of role. I don't think his stuff likely plays in high leverage situations but I do think shorter mid relief outings in medium leverage could be in the cards. He's another dude who's numbers have been pretty damn bad 5.53 ERA/6.88 FIP over the last month so he also needs to get his game back in order.

We shall see how this all unfolds. I think the 6 man rotation and subsequent collective overuse of the pen was a strong contributing factor to the bullpen implosion. I don't think the results of this were fully apparent until well after the deadline had passed. I'm sure the front office might want to go back in time and acquire another quality pen option and maybe even a backup closer. That being said it's hard to criticize them completely without knowing what other teams were asking of them for the relievers that ended up elsewhere. Let's say the Pirates were insisting on a young stud arm like King or Stanifer, that would be an awfully high price to pay. We can only hope that with the addition of a high quality reinforcement in Fisher and quality long man in Lauer that the pen can improve it's fortunes over time. I think there is enough talent in the bullpen to support the team going on a run in the post season, but these guys all need to get back to throwing the ball the way they are able to. My biggest individual concern in the pen right now is the struggles of Little lately. He's either missing the zone completely and walking the world or actually hitting the strike zone and melting down with bad defense leading to a bunch of extra baserunners.

I don't think you can say the Blue Jays front office refused to move prospects at the deadline when they were actually one of the more aggressive teams out there. I think they made the wise choice in not sending out any top 3 prospects in an improving system for relief help but that's being said without knowing that so many of the previously solid relievers in the bullpen would struggle so tremendously all at the same time. I'm guessing they would like a do over on the Fisher demotion as that removed a very important arm from the pen.

You only need to back to last season to find a comparably awful bullpen.

Yesavage wouldn't have been used in today's game with such a small lead anyway.

It seems like you could stand to temper your expectations a tiny bit. You seem to think that this pitching staff needs a savior to come up from the minor leagues to save the season but I tend to think if they are going to go anywhere the guys already on the roster are going to need to pitch closer to their capabilities. This was evident with the insistence that the team needed Manoah to instantly return to peak form for the team to have a shot, and now it's exactly the same kind of thing with Yesavage. It's perfectly defensible for the club to decide to delay calling up a first year professional for a bit instead of immediately thrusting him into a pennant race. To my eyes the primary reason why the pen has struggled so much recently is that the majority of the relievers have been handing out far too many free passes. Yesavage almost certainly isn't going to do anything to improve this issue as he's currently sporting a 6.55 BB/9 rate in AAA. The last few starts have been better as the majority of the free passes came in his first AAA start so hopefully with another solid outing or two the front office will deem him ready for a shot.

It's good to see you throwing a tantrum instead of the usual assortment of end is nigh type of posts. That displays some tremendous personal growth. Yesavage is a completely untested/unproven rookie who has struggled with walks in AAA this season. It's been pointed out that there is a loophole that may allow Yesavage to be on the post season roster as in injury replacement so it's not the literal end of the world if he's not in the bullpen on September 1.

Bringing Fisher back up can provide some impact as well as he's arguably been the team's best/most reliable reliever this season. He had wobbled a tiny bit in recent outings but he showed that he was a really high quality reliever and I fully believe it was a mistake to send him down over Fluharty who was sent down a few days later anyway.

We shall see who is added to the pitching staff later today. It appears as though it will be more of a fungible type of arm to simply cover a few innings vs someone who can make any kind of impact. I don't know if the front office doesn't think Yesavage is ready for a callup or what their thinking is at this point.

I think you may be missing a key point in the first paragraph that could open the door for Yesavage to be added to the post season roster despite not being on the 40 man roster. The bolded sentence shows that players can still be added to the post season roster as an injury replacement even if they aren't on the 40 man roster or 60 day injured list on September 1.

After your Oscar worthy sky is falling performance earlier in the season you are just going to have to continue to take your lumps. It's like there's a dark cloud constantly following you and there's always a crisis lurking around every corner at all points of the season. We can all see that this team isn't perfect but there is still a lot of talent on the entire roster including the pitching staff. We've seen at various points at the season that this bullpen can be highly effective and completely shut down the opposition as it's staffed with a lot of filthy arms but unfortunately most of these dudes tend to go through periods of struggles as we've seen over the last month. The starting rotation is rounding into form as Gausman has been pitching like a borderline number 1 over the last few months, Bieber is looking like an ace so far and Scherzer was performing very well recently as well prior to yesterday's game where his back was acting up so hopefully this continues into the post season and lessens the relative load on the bullpen a touch.

Having one such player on the roster that's pencilled into the lineup no matter what is bad enough though let alone two of them. It's crazy but IKF has actually outperformed Ernie against RHP this season, albeit with a still really bad 87 wRC+.

Does it matter how recently the injury occurred? Yimi Garcia and Nick Sandlin have each been out long term but aside from another reliever going down due to injury it could complicate matters.

My fear is that he does nothing but serve to cannibalize playing time for other more deserving players. From the manager's comments it doesn't sound like he's going to play every day but given John Schneider's seeming love affair with Ernie Clement and IKF largely fitting the same mold as light hitting speedy utility player who knows for certain.

Things aren't nearly as dire as you are making them out to be (surprise surprise). Despite the relative struggles of the pen over the month of August the club finished the month with a 15-12 record which is a pretty decent result all things considered.

Yesavage is still getting his feet wet in AAA at this point. He's experienced a bit of an adjustment at every level along the way this season and it appears as though he may be nearing MLB readiness based on his last few starts.