Blue Jays: The big questions for this team in a 60 game season

Now that it looks like baseball will return in late July, what are the big questions for the Blue Jays ahead of the 60 game season in 2020?

It was a very ugly process, but on Tuesday evening we finally got the news that baseball will return in 2020. At least, that’s the legitimate plan for the time being.

Reports indicate that teams will begin their second spring training on July 1st, with the regular season schedule getting underway on July 24th. It doesn’t give them a lot of time to get ready, but hopefully most players have been staying in shape in anticipation of a return.

I’lll admit that I was growing more pessimistic by the day about whether we’d see baseball this year, and now that it looks like we’ll have a season after all, it’s worth re-starting a lot of conversations we were having earlier this spring.

What are the big questions facing the Blue Jays this year? Obviously the whole league is going to have to make some adjustments with a reduced schedule, new safety protocols, and playing games without fans in attendance, but how will this affect the Blue Jays in particular?

The 2020 campaign should have been a season focused on growth for this young club, and hopefully making a significant improvement from their 67-win season a year ago. That said, the stakes have completely changed now, and it’ll be very interesting to see how things go for this talented young team, but also how this strange season impacts the players on the roster.

Let’s have a look at some of the bigger questions facing this team right now as they prepare to get back on the diamond.

What does this mean for Nate Pearson?

Let’s face it, Nate Pearson is going to be one of the most talked about Blue Jays over the next month. There are a lot of good reasons for that, as he’s currently rated #8 on the Baseball America Top 100 Prospects list, and has the type of arsenal that baseball fans dream about.

Earlier this year it looked like Pearson would be destined for a start in Triple-A Buffalo, with the assumption that he’d make his MLB debut at some point later in the year. Part of the rationale for holding him back would have been around service time, but he was also going to need to take a gradual approach to building up his innings limit as well.

Now that the season is going to be just 60 games, there is no physical reason to hold him back from the big league squad. If the team utilized a five-man rotation, he would make a maximum of 12 starts before the post-season. He’s probably looking a season of 60-70 innings under that format, which is easily manageable.

That said, I wouldn’t say that it’s a guarantee that Pearson will make the team to start this strange new season. That could depend on how the rules will impact his service time, and how good the Blue Jays are at finding a justifiable angle. Per the agreement made back in March, players will receive a full year of service time if they play the whole season. That could mean that the Blue Jays will have no choice but to surrender that extra year of contract control. Here’s how it worked according to the agreement from March:

“If games are played, a player would receive service equal to days in the major leagues multiplied by 186 (days in the original season’s schedule), divided by the number of days in the revised schedule after excluding interruptions in play. A full service year remains 172 days. If no games are played, each player on the major league roster or injured list would receive major league service equaling what that player accrued in 2019. Players on the restricted list would not receive any service time.”

That said, they do have a full five-man rotation with Hyun-Jin Ryu, Tanner Roark, Chase Anderson, Matt Shoemaker, and other options like Trent Thornton, Ryan Borucki, or even Shun Yamaguchi. The front office could make the argument that they don’t need Pearson to start the year, it’s just not a good one. Ideally you want to see your team put the best possible product on the field, and with all due respect to the rest of the pitchers on the 40-man roster, it’s hard to imagine how Pearson doesn’t fit the bill.

At this stage it remains unclear how the service time will work for players who do not start the season on the active roster, but the assumption is that initial agreement will remain in place, at least unless we hear otherwise.

Where will they play?

With the border between Canada and the United States being closed to non-essential travel right now, the Blue Jays really don’t have the option of hosting their home games in Toronto. That could change in a month’s time of course, but it’s not looking like that will be the case.

There has been talk that the Blue Jays are seeking to have their spring training in Toronto, especially in light of the Coronavirus outbreaks in Florida right now, where their spring training facilities are located. That said, it doesn’t sound like they’ve gained clearance just yet, and would still be subject to a 14-day quarantine just like anyone else.

According to Richard Griffin, a former writer and current spokesman for the Blue Jays, “The regular season locale is still a work in progress. That’s all we can say at this time”. There has been speculation that they could play their regular season games at their spring training compound, provided it’s safe of course, or maybe even use “the Trop” as an alternative home base for now (wouldn’t that be just… gross).

The reality is, we don’t really know where the Blue Jays will be playing their home games yet, and that’s a strange thing to say now that there’s an agreement in place. That said, 2020 has been a year of a lot of unanswered questions and quickly changing plans, so I don’t know that it should alarm anyone just yet.

It will be an issue that will have to be sorted out, but as things stand today, it’s hard to imagine there being Blue Jays games in Canada this year. Bummer.

How does this work exactly?

The details of Tuesday’s agreement are still being made public, and it sounds like it’s going to be a creative season of baseball.

As we’ve heard in the past, there will be a new division structure that means the Blue Jays and the AL East will amalgamate with the NL East. According to details from the Associated Press yesterday, it sounds like each team will play 10 games against their own division rivals, and five against the teams from the other league. For the Blue Jays that means 10 games each against the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, and Orioles, and five each against the Washington Nationals, Atlanta Braves, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, and Miami Marlins.

It sounds like the number of post-season teams won’t be changing and will stay at 10, but there are some other tweaks for this season including a Universal DH, and starting a runner on base during extra innings. The size of the roster will be a little different as well, as it sounds like teams will be able to carry 30 players to start the season, and will gradually reduce the number to 26. There will also be expanded taxi squads and eligible players on the roster, as the league needs to prepare for the possibility that players could contract the illness and need time away to recover, and keep others safe.

I think we’ll have to accept that the situation could be fluid, even if and when play resumes. All we really know for now is that the plan is to re-start spring training on July 1, and that the regular season schedule should get underway on July 23 or 24. There’s an agreement in place for now, but don’t be surprised if there are still changes yet to come, especially before that first pitch is thrown next month.