Blue Jays: All-time Jays rotation made up of pitchers that were never teammates

The Toronto Blue Jays have been blessed with outstanding starting pitching much of their 46 year history: two Hall of Famers, a few more guys who have legitimate arguments for inclusion in to Cooperstown, five AL Cy Young awards, and 32 All-Star nods. Current ace Alek Manoah continues that tradition, being named an All-Star and as a finalist for the 2022 AL Cy Young award in only his second MLB season.

But in trying to choose an all-time Blue Jays rotation of pitchers that were never teammates, that embarrassment of starting pitching riches over the years means Cy Young winners, All-Stars and single season ERA leaders get left off the list. Guys like Jim Clancy, Juan Guzmán, Hall of Famer Jack Morris, not to mention Cy Young winners Pat Hentgen, Roger Clemens and Robbie Ray.

Top of Rotation Ace - Stieb or Halladay?

No list of an all-time Blue Jays starting rotation should leave off legends Dave Stieb and Roy Halladay as co-aces; however in a strange twist of fate and for the purposes of this ranking, they were actually teammates briefly in 1998. Stieb was a guest instructor at Spring Training in Dunedin for the Jays in 1998 after four years out of pro baseball, but still had something in the tank, ending up in Triple-A Syracuse, where he posted a 2.73 ERA over 9 starts and 66 innings.

He was called up to Toronto that June and picked up another young Jays starter, Chris Carpenter, in the 9th inning of a 13-6 win over Baltimore on June 18th. He would go on to make make three starts with 16 relief appearances and a 4.83 ERA that season, before finally calling it a career at age 41.

Halladay was a September call-up that fall, making his major league debut in Tampa in a start against the Devil Rays, as they were then called. Stieb would pitch 2.2 innings in relief of the rookie. Seven days later, Halladay came within one out of a no-hitter in his second career start at home against Detroit, before Tiger Bobby Higginson homered. In yet another twist of fate, Stieb caught that home run ball when it ricocheted off the back wall of the bullpen.

So who doesn’t make our all-time list of starters who were never teammates, Stieb or Halladay? One who is in the Hall of Fame and a two-time Cy Young winner, or one who arguably should have won multiple Cy Youngs and been enshrined in Cooperstown, but who pitched in an era that valued wins and ERA more than WAR and quality starts? Add in Chris Carpenter, who would go on to a Cy Young award, ERA title and two World Series titles with the St. Louis Cardinals as another teammate of both Jays greats.

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Victim of his own success?

What works against the case for including Stieb on this ranking is again something completely beyond his control; he pitched on Blue Jays teams that were far more successful as a group, and enjoyed far more regular and postseason success, culminating in a World Series championship in 1992. Which for the purposes of this ranking, makes him a victim of his own success.

The Blue Jays would lose three times in the ALCS from 1985 to 1991, before finally advancing to the 1992 World Series against the Atlanta Braves. That level of success meant Stieb was surrounded by some incredible talent, including some great starting pitchers.

Halladay, by contrast, would pitch on some very average Blue Jays teams in the lean years from 1998 to 2009, which included eight third place finishes, two fourths and a fifth in the AL East. The closest Halladay ever came to the postseason as a Blue Jay was the 2006 team that finished in 2nd place, 10.0 games back of the Yankees. Sadly, his talents were wasted on a team that couldn’t keep up with the top teams in the East.

So for this ranking, Halladay makes the rotation only because Dave Stieb was surrounded by a much better pitching staff.

Before we go on, let me emphasize how important Stieb is to this franchise's colorful history.

What more can we say about Stieb apart from the fact that his continued omission from the Hall of Fame is one of the greatest baseball travesties of our lifetimes? A 5th round draft pick out in the 1978 MLB June amateur draft from Southern Illinois University, Stieb joined the Blue Jays Level of Excellence after a 15 year career with the team.

As a Blue Jay, he went 175-134 with a 3.42 ERA and 3.82 FIP over 2873.0 innings, with a cumulative bWAR of 56.9 and fWAR of 43.6 (fWAR from FanGraphs uses FIP, whereas bWAR from Baseball Reference uses runs allowed per nine innings; MLB averages the two to come up with their WAR number). He led the AL in innings pitched in both 1982 and 1984, and racked up 103 complete games and 30 shutouts for Toronto, including the franchise’s first and only no-hitter on September 2, 1990.

He also earned seven All-Star selections, and led the AL in ERA at 2.48 in 1985, when he helped lead the Blue Jays to 99 wins and AL East pennant with 27 quality starts (six innings pitched with three earned runs or less allowed) and 6.8 bWAR. That marked the first ever postseason appearance for the then-nine-year-old expansion franchise, where they lost to Kansas City 4-3.

In fact, from 1982 to 1985, Stieb had a cumulative bWAR of 28.3 and fWAR of 20.0, averaged 36 starts and 275 innings per season with a 2.91 ERA, and could have had as many as four AL Cy Young awards if the voters had valued WAR and quality starts like they do in today’s game. The quality start stat was only created in 1985.

James Edward Key

Jimmy Key was drafted by the Blue Jays in the 1982 MLB June Amateur Draft out of Clemson University. He would rocket through the Jays system, and by 1984 at the age of 23 he was in The Show. He makes this list because he never overlapped as teammates with Halladay. But also because he posted a bWAR of 29.7 and 28.0 fWAR over nine seasons with Toronto (third highest all-time), compiling a 116-81 record with a 3.42 ERA and 3.70 FIP over 1,685.2 innings, with 28 complete games and ten shutouts. He was also a two-time All-Star as a Jay and finished second in the 1987 Cy Young voting after leading the AL with a 2.76 ERA over 36 starts and 261 innings.

Most importantly, he also went 2-0 in the 1992 World Series win over the Braves, tossing 9 innings and only allowing a single earned run. He allowed just one run in 7.2 innings to lead the Blue Jays to a 2-1 win over Atlanta in Game 4 of that series, in what turned out to be his final start in Toronto after he left the Skydome mound to a standing ovation. In fact, including his second World Series title with the Yankees in 1996, he went 3-1 with a 2.66 ERA over 20.1 innings in the Fall Classic. He also possessed an outstanding pick-off move to 1B, check it out:

Doc Halladay

Hall of Famer and fellow Level of Excellence inductee Roy Halladay joins Key at the top of the all-time rotation of pitchers who were never teammates. His Blue Jays career spanned 12 seasons from 1998 through 2009, where he accumulated a bWAR of 48.4 and fWAR of 48.7 by posting a 148-76 record with a 3.43 ERA and 3.47 FIP over 2046.2 innings. He also pitched 49 complete games with 15 shutouts.

He was a six-time All-Star as a Jay, led the AL in innings pitched three times, and won the 2003 AL Cy Young award after posting a 22-7 record with a 3.25 ERA, with nine complete games in 36 starts and 266.0 innings. His 8.1 bWAR that season is tied for third all-time with Roger Clemens for a single-season WAR for Blue Jay pitchers.

Unfortunately Toronto never made the postseason during his tenure, but he did go on to find postseason success with the Phillies in 2010-2011. In fact, he won the 2010 NL Cy Young in his first year with Philadelphia, when they lost in the NLCS to the eventual World Series champion San Francisco Giants that year. He tossed the 20th perfect game in MLB history on May 29th against the Marlins, and went on to pitch a no-hitter in Game 1 of the 2010 NLDS against the Reds.

Who is in the running for the third-through-fifth starter role?

This is where this ranking again gets tricky. Looking at the Jays’ all-time and single-season WAR leaders for pitchers, we’ve already got two of the top three. But Jimmy Key was teammates with such rotation stalwarts as Stieb, Hentgen, Jim Clancy, Juan Guzmán, Doyle Alexander, Jack Morris, David Cone, Al Leiter and David Wells.

Halladay also overlapped with the great Pat Hentgen in the 1998-99 seasons, as Stieb had also done in 1991-92 when Hentgen was just breaking in as a rookie. Hentgen would go on to post a 26.8 bWAR and 20.2 fWAR in 10 seasons with the Blue Jays, including a monster 8.6 bWAR season in 1996 when he won the first ever AL Cy Young award in franchise history (remember Stieb was robbed in the early-1980s!).

Hentgen also led the AL in innings pitched in both 1996, when he went 20-10 with a 3.22 ERA over 265.2 innings with 10 complete games and 3 shutouts, and then again in 1997 when he racked up another 264 innings with 9 complete games and 3 more shutouts.

Halladay’s inclusion also wipes out another legendary Jays starter in Roger Clemens, who posted the highest ever single-season WAR in Blue Jays history with an 11.9 bWAR in 1997, when he went 21-7 with a 2.05 ERA over an AL-leading 264 innings, which earned him a fourth AL Cy Young award that season.

Clemens would win a second consecutive Cy Young as a Blue Jay in 1998 before being traded to the Yankees ahead of the 1999 season, but unfortunately that knocks him off this list, because Halladay overlapped with Clemens in 1998 when he was a rookie, making two starts and tossing 14 innings.

With Halladay then a mainstay through the 2009 season, we have to fast forward to 2010 to continue our search for an all-time rotation. Ricky Romero (who’d overlapped with Halliday in 2009) and Shaun Marcum were okay, but not all-time greats. Brandon Morrow and Brett Cecil also showed promise at that time but ultimately ended up as relievers.

R.A. Dickey arrived in a big trade ahead of the 2013 season coming off the 2012 NL Cy Young, and was a mainstay of the rotation in his four Blue Jay seasons through 2016, with 130 starts and 824.1 innings. He also helped them to back-to-back ALCS appearances in 2015-16, but his Jays’ ERA of 4.05 and FIP of 4.58 meant his bWAR was only 7.1 and fWAR only 6.2.

Marcus Stroman arrived as a heralded rookie in 2014 and also put up some solid starting pitching in his six seasons with Toronto, compiling a 47-45 record with a 3.76 ERA and 3.60 FIP over 789.2 innings, accumulating a bWAR of 12.5. J.A. Happ compiled fairly comparable numbers as well as a Blue Jay from 2012-14 and again from 2015-18, with a 59-41 record, 3.88 ERA and 3.95 FIP over 745.1 innings which resulted in 10.2 bWAR.

Dickey, Stroman and Happ all have legitimate arguments in favor of making this list. However, it’s time for a controversial choice. After two Halladay and Key at the top, it would be fun to add another southpaw to the all-time Jays rotation of pitchers who were never teammates. Enter David Price.

Enter the Big Lefty

By the time of the 2015 trade deadline, David Price was already a five-time All-Star, and had won the 2012 AL Cy Young with Tampa Bay on the back of a 20-5 win-loss record and 2.56 ERA and 3.05 FIP over 211 innings with 6.6 bWAR. He’d been traded from Tampa to Detroit ahead of the 2014 trade deadline, and was a free agent to be after the 2015 season. Then Blue Jays General Manager Alex Anthopoulos, with his team stuck at 52-51 and tied for 2nd place with the Orioles, 6.0 games back of the Yankees in the AL East, went all in at the trade deadline and dealt pitching prospects Matt Boyd, Jairo Labourt and Daniel Norris to the Tigers for the 29-year-old Price.

What Price then did down the stretch for Toronto is the stuff of legends: he went 9-1 in 11 starts, with a. 2.30 ERA, 1.009 WHIP and 2.22 FIP covering 74.1 innings, with 87 strikeouts against only 18 walks and a 2.6 bWAR. He quite literally powered the Blue Jays to a 41-18 record in August and September in leading them to an AL East pennant that year, and a deep postseason run where they ultimately succumbed to the Royals in the ALCS, losing 4-2.

While unable to lead Toronto to a World Series championship that season, Price did go on to star for Boston and helped lead them to the 2018 World Series title, going 2-0 with a 1.98 ERA over 13.2 innings against the Dodgers in the Fall Classic. And while he was only a rental player for two months, his electric performance in the dog days of the summer in 2015 not only thrilled Blue Jays fans across Canada and the GTA, but it took them back to the postseason from the first time in 22 years. For that, he is the third starter on this all-time Jays rotation of pitchers who were never teammates.