Blue Jays place Aaron Sanchez on the DL, recall Scott Copeland

The Toronto Blue Jays thought a skipped start would be enough to get Aaron Sanchez back into game shape. Unfortunately that doesn’t appear to be the case, with the Blue Jays placing Sanchez on the 15-day disabled list on Sunday night. Shi Davidi of Sportsnet was the first to report the move.

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Sanchez last started on June 5th, firing a career-high eight innings and allowing six hits and one earned run in a win over the Houston Astros. However, Toronto opted to skip Sanchez when his next turn in the rotation came up on June 10th, instead using Scott Copeland. At the time, it was said to be “general pitching soreness” and the Blue Jays opted to give him a little bit of extra rest to help alleviate it. Unfortunately, that soreness has apparently been revealed to be a lat strain which will necessitate a sting on the disabled list.

The move will be backdated to June 6th, which will allow Sanchez to return to the Blue Jays roster as early as Sunday June 21st. In the meantime, Aaron Sanchez has flown down to Dunedin to rehab the injury and work on getting ready for that return.

It is somewhat of an unfortunate timing for Sanchez, who owns a 5-4 record with a 3.55 ERA and a 5.7 K/9 ratio. While his peripheral stats would indicate that the’s due to regress a bit (5.18 FIP, 5.0 BB/9 ratio), Sanchez has actually shown quite the opposite over his last several starts. Sanchez worked to a 3.29 ERA and a 4.88 FIP in May, and then followed that up with his brilliant start in Houston. An extreme ground-ball pitcher, Sanchez is currently getting close to 60% of his outs via the ground-ball, which will in turn inflate his FIP.

Once again, the Blue Jays will look to Scott Copeland to cover for Aaron Sanchez. That worked out pretty well for Toronto last time, when Copeland fired seven innings of six-hit baseball, allowing just one earned run and striking out four on his way to the first big league victory of his career. Because of the injury to Sanchez, the Blue Jays were able to avoid the 10-day moratorium on recalling a player that was just optioned to the minors. Copeland was sent down immediately after his start, allowing the Blue Jays to promote Phil Coke over the weekend.

Copeland will take the ball on Tuesday against the New York Mets where he’ll also get the opportunity to acquire his first Major League hit.

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