Yariel Rodriguez’s arrival leads to pitching changes for Blue Jays

TORONTO – Yariel Rodriguez’s arrival in Toronto means the biggest challenge of his professional career is imminent, and the Cuban right-hander’s presence will also allow the Blue Jays to reconfigure their pitching staff starting Saturday.

For the most part, manager John Schneider kept things vague in his pre-game media availability with reporters Friday afternoon. He acknowledged that Rodriguez was in Toronto, and that he’ll probably be activated at some point during this weekend’s series.

Yet there were “some different scenarios” in play depending on how things unfolded against the Rockies in the series opener. After an 12-4 loss in which the Blue Jays asked their bullpen to cover 5.1 innings against the Colorado Rockies, Schneider made it official: Rodriguez will start in place of Bowden Francis on Saturday afternoon, with Francis available in a piggyback role out of the bullpen.

“I think that makes sense when you’re looking at that (fifth) spot in the rotation for sure,” Schneider explained Friday afternoon. “So I think we’ll probably roll it out with some kind of consistency. But it’s a nice little tandem there.”

The move has a few repercussions, not only for Rodriguez but for Francis, whose first two major-league starts against the Astros and Yankees went poorly, with 12 earned runs allowed in just 8.1 total innings. He struck out 12, but allowed 12 hits, including four home runs, while walking four.

That’s an unwelcome contrast to 2023, when Francis posted a 1.73 ERA out of the Blue Jays’ bullpen, and spring training, when the right-hander excelled in the Grapefruit League. Asked to assess Francis on Friday afternoon, Schneider said the right-hander’s stuff has been good, yet perhaps “not as crisp” as it was in bullpen.

“Asking any pitcher to transform into a major-league starter is tough,” Schneider said. “Not that we don’t think (Bowden) can do it. But when you have other avenues to (consider), I think it’s beneficial. Bowden in (a relief) role, if you’re looking for a good sixth and seventh inning or something, he’s more than capable.”

So, starting Saturday, a rotation spot will open up for Rodriguez, who last pitched Sunday at triple-A Buffalo. He threw just 47 pitches in that outing, down from a season high of 55, so by no means is he fully stretched out. But even four innings of Rodriguez’s best stuff could help the big-league team right now.

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“He just has such a good pitch mix,” said catcher Brian Serven, who worked regularly with Rodriguez this spring. “He’s so calm and his motion is so clean that you just go to sleep on him, and then everything explodes out of his hand.”

The Blue Jays liked Rodriguez enough to sign him to a five-year, $32-million contract following a 2023 season when he didn’t pitch professionally. In 2022, he excelled in a relief role with the Chunichi Dragons in Japan, attracting the interest of MLB teams.

The 27-year-old now throws a four-seam fastball, a sinker, a curve and a slider. Plus, he can cut the fastball for added movement when he wants to.

“He throws all of them for strikes and he knows what he wants to do with all of them,” Serven said. “That opens up a lot of options.”

Ideally, that arsenal would help the Blue Jays for multiple innings at a time, even if it’s not as a traditional starting pitcher who goes six innings at a time all season. The team will likely hesitate to push him far past 100 total innings after a season he was on the sidelines, which is why Schneider says Rodriguez’s “role could be a little bit fluid.”

“You don’t want to burn through all those innings in Buffalo,” the manager said. “So it just came down to when and if he was ready. And, we’ll just have to monitor (workload) while he’s here.”

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It’s possible he starts for now – with a predictable schedule that allows for regular work while he acclimates to the majors – before finishing the year in the bullpen.

“If we have to curtail it later in the year, we will,” Schneider continued. “We feel comfortable with his stuff in (a relief) capacity as well.”

Regardless of what that role eventually looks like, there’s now a chance for Rodriguez to take a meaningful step forward in his career and compete at the big-league level  for the first time. By all accounts he has the raw stuff to do it. But with just two minor-league appearances to his name after a year away from professional baseball, he’ll have to earn every bit of success that comes his way.

“MLB is the highest level of baseball in the world,” Serven said. “So no matter where you come from or where you’ve been, stepping on an MLB field for the first time, there’s always going to be that bit of excitement and those jitters.”

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