NEW YORK — About 30 minutes prior to Friday’s first pitch, Spencer Arrighetti walked slowly out to left field at Yankee Stadium, just as a starter would. Once there, he went through his typical pre-start warm-up routine. Stretching, long toss, mentally locking in.
But as the bottom of the first inning began, he wasn’t on the game mound. He was on the one in the bullpen, throwing warm-up pitches while Mason Fluharty, an opener, threw ones that count.
That’s how the Toronto Blue Jays opted to begin another bullpen game — a common, oft-successful strategy for the club over the last several seasons — starting its best left-handed reliever against a New York Yankees team that regularly stacks left-handed hitters atop its lineup.
But Yankees manager Aaron Boone had a counterpunch waiting, writing out a batting order he hadn’t used all season that began with a string of right-handed hitters — Paul Goldschmidt, Amed Rosario, and Heliot Ramos. George Lombard Jr — another righty — lurked in the five-hole behind Ben Rice, putting Fluharty in an awfully disadvantageous position.
Goldschmidt flew out ambushing Fluharty’s first pitch of the game, but Rosario walked on four pitches and was immediately replaced with the left-handed hitting Jazz Chisholm Jr. at first base. Fluharty got a groundball hit too softly for a double play out of Ramos, but promptly walked the lone lefty in the string — Rice — on five pitches before being lifted.
Point Boone. Toronto’s opener faced 75 per cent of his hitters with a platoon disadvantage and walked a pair while its bulk arm was forced to begin his night with two runners on. The cost for the Yankees was burning a bench spot; but the Blue Jays burned a leverage left-hander in turn.
Credit Arrighetti for entering that uncomfortable situation pumping the zone, going right after Lombard and striking him out on four pitches. But New York’s tactics paid off in the second, as Arrighetti began the inning facing a pair of left-handed hitters — Trent Grisham, who walked, and Spencer Jones, who lifted an elevated cutter 395 feet skyward along the right-field line.
First base umpire Dan Iassogna took a good, long look at it travelling over the foul pole and judged the ball as a homer. And upon crew chief review, there presumably wasn’t enough evidence to overturn the call, which was upheld. Arrighetti retired the next three batters he faced — all righties — but the damage was done. Boone’s gambit paid off with two early runs.
On a night when he had Cy Young frontrunner Cam Schlittler starting, that was liable to be enough. Yet Schlittler was decidedly less than his best self, lacking control and command while earning little whiff and chase. The Blue Jays encountered a rare opportunity against one of the game’s best arms on an off night. But a bottom-five offence sputtered and sparked, letting Boone’s early-game maneuvering prove the difference in a 3-1 defeat.
“I know Boonie said in spring training he’s the least analytical manager in the league. Pinch runner in the first with that lineup construction,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said with a wry grin. “We wanted Spence at Lombard no matter what. And I think if you can limit the walks — they’re built on walks and homers. And that was the difference today.”
Arrighetti, meanwhile, allowed three runs on three hits and two walks while striking out four in his Blue Jays debut, facing 15 hitters over 3.1 innings. He threw more fastballs — both four-seamers and sinkers — than he did earlier this season in place of fewer curveballs and changeups. That appeared to be an effort to work ahead more consistently, as he started over half the batters he faced with fastballs for strikes.
Arrighetti’s first-pitch strike rate entering the night was 53.4 per cent, which ranked 159th of the 160 MLB pitchers to throw at least 70 innings this season. But Friday against the Yankees, Arrighetti started 11 of the 15 he faced — 73.3 per cent — with a strike.
“That’s music to my ears,” Arrighetti said. “That’s the one thing that I’ve been really harping on myself about since going on the IL — coming back a better version of myself that’s really aggressive in the strike zone early and putting myself in a good position to take those counts even deeper and get more leverage on guys. Because I feel like I’m a really dominant pitcher when I do that.”
Offensively, it was a night of missed opportunities for the Blue Jays, who went 1-for-14 with runners in scoring position. Brett Bateman fell a homer short of a cycle, Jesus Sanchez did what he does against righties with two hits, and Alejandro Kirk continued being one of the hottest hitters on the planet with an RBI single and two walks. But plenty was left on the table.
After Schlittler breezed through his first two innings, Blue Jays hitters did their pesky best in the third and fourth, forcing him to throw 26 pitches in each. Myles Straw was particularly persistent, working the Yankees ace for a walk in the third and an eight-pitch battle in the fourth. But Toronto had to live with the consolation prize of merely running up Schlittler’s pitch count as he escaped both frames unharmed.
Bateman led off the fifth by shooting a double into the left-field corner before Kirk — who else? — finally broke through, sticking with a 98-m.p.h. fastball away and bouncing it into right to cash Toronto’s first run. But Toronto otherwise allowed Schlittler to escape jam after jam and stranded runners in scoring position against the three relievers that followed him. A good-enough-to-win effort from six Blue Jays pitchers couldn’t overcome an all-too-familiar night from its offence.
“You just need the big hit,” Schneider said. “But (Schlitter’s) good. He’s one of the best pitchers in the league and kind of leaned into the four-seamer with guys at third. It was tough for us. But I like the way we grinded him. Didn’t strike out much and definitely had our chances. Just didn’t come through when we needed to.”
Now, Toronto’s coaching staff has proven quite adept at strategizing and managing these bullpen days over the years. Less than a week ago, they used seven pitchers — none of whom faced more than seven batters — to hold the Yankees to only a run on four hits. And less than a year ago, they eliminated the Yankees from the post-season with an eight-pitcher effort in which no one was on the mound for longer than 1.2 innings.
But the cleanest route to victory is always through a traditional starter. In the age of the 13-pitcher roster limit, with the league’s relentless 162-game schedule a 1960’s relic that’s persisted despite the physicality and intensity of the modern game rendering it borderline reckless, the tax a relief corps pays for regular bullpen days is untenable.
Which is why Arrighetti is likely to take Toronto’s fifth rotation spot as a starter going forward. His deployment from the bullpen Friday was part strategic, part circumstantial due to his volume being limited as he returns from a Morton’s neuroma bout that kept him on the IL for a month.
But after 61 pitches Friday, Arrighetti ought to be able to push it further towards the 75-pitch range his next time out. And soon, the Blue Jays can let him ride. He reached 100 pitches three times for the Astros earlier this season, pitching into the sixth inning in over half of his 16 starts.
That ought to put an end to the Blue Jays bullpen days for now. For good? Don’t kid yourself.