Are the Toronto Blue Jays Ready to Buy In On Carlos Villanueva?
Carlos Villanueva has taken on a number of roles in his career: prospect starter, closer in waiting, spot starter, middle reliever. He’s jumped around a bit, but these days, the 28-year old walks around as the best starting pitcher currently on the Toronto Blue Jays staff.
Now, I know, the starting pitching in Toronto has been a mess all year long, so it might not be saying much. Still, with another solid outing this afternoon (that ended with Villanueva as the hard-luck loser despite throwing 6.1 innings of 2-run ball), Villanueva’s numbers as a starter this season would be impressive, even if Brandon Morrow were back from injury. The pending free agent has taken massive strides in his 9 starts on the season thus far, posting a 3.02/1.10 ERA/WHIP over 53.2 innings that easily makes him the cream of the current crop of Blue Jays starters, along with a Morrow-esque 9.14 K/9. Combined with a 2.54 BB/9 during that stretch (compared to a rather poor 5.71 as a starter), and the Blue Jays have a guy on the team who is making a hell of a case to land a spot in the rotation next year.
If he’s on the team then, anyway. There’s the thing about Villanueva’s pending free agency, see, and the Blue Jays have to decide whether they want to pay up an extension that will likely be a raise over his $2.28 million salary in ’12 to keep the righty in Toronto; and if so, for how long?
It’s difficult to pick at Villanueva’s resultss this season, for sure, but it’s probably pertinent to keep in mind that we are dealing with a fairly small sample of success here. The Blue Jays also tried him as a starter last season to poor results, with Villanueva posting a 5.15/1.38 ERA/WHIP over 73.1 innings before going down with a forearm strain. He’s thrown more than 110 big league innings in a season just once, back in 2007, so even if his current results can be carried over, there is a legitimate workload/injury concern. For his part, Villanueva has said he wants to stay in Toronto as a starter, but will he able to handle the 170+ innings expected of a #3 starter without breaking down, when he’s never done it in his professional career?
Some major questions for the Blue Jays as they consider whether or not it’ll be worthwhile to lock up Villanueva before free agency hits, then. We know it won’t be a long deal because Alex Anthopoulos doesn’t do those, but while there’s still an opportunity to play armchair GM, I’m thinking about $8 million over 2 years might do the trick. Obviously, the rest of the season could have a significant effect on the outcome, but should Villanueva finish the season the way he has pitched as a starter and avoid injury, it seems in line with the other extensions that the Blue Jays GM has dished out over the years.
There’s risk in extending a guy like Villanueva with the intention of paying him as a starter, for sure; but with the team needing to fill major holes in their rotation, resigning a player with the kind of upside he’s shown (thinking 160-170 innings of mid-3 ERA ball) could provide a relatively efficient solution to taking care of at least one spot in the starting 5. That almost sounds like an unreasonable amount of consistency to expect from a pitcher who, frankly, has never shown it in an extended stretch of his career until now…but I’m just hopeful, okay? It’s not as though there are that many great FA options out there this off-season.
Besides, what’s the worst that can happen? Maybe the forearm strain last season is a precursor to a future injury? It’s not like the team’s not an expert at dealing with those by now.
Buy Toronto Blue Jays Tickets | Buy Toronto Blue Jays Apparel
Leave a Rant
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!