Injured Blue Jays left-hander Ryan Borucki’s next start will come at the Major League level, manager Charlie Montoyo told reporters Thursday (Twitter link via Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet). Borucki has spent all season on the 60-day injured list, so he’ll need to be added back to the 40-man roster. Nick Kingham’s DFA earlier today gives the Jays an open spot.
Borucki, 25, presents Toronto with a potential long-term piece in the rotation. He emerged for his first look at the MLB level last season and more than held his own in the hitter-friendly American League East, as he pitched to a 3.87 ERA with 6.2 K/9, 3.0 BB/9, 0.65 HR/9 and a 46.8 percent ground-ball rate. Borucki’s K/BB numbers weren’t particularly strong, so barring an improvement on that front, he’ll need to keep limiting the long ball as he did in 2018 to maintain that success. That’s a tougher task than ever amid the current home run deluge in MLB, although Borucki entered the season having averaged just 0.58 HR/9 in his minor league career.
An elbow issue sidelined Borucki in Spring Training and ultimately kept him out far longer than initially anticipated. He’s made four rehab outings in the minors over the past few weeks, during which he’s tallied 18 innings with an even 3.00 ERA and a strong 19-to-3 K/BB ratio.
Borucki will return to a rotation that also includes Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez and Trent Thornton but has seen turnover in the other starting spots. He’ll help to solidify that mix for a brief time, but the Blue Jays seem extremely likely to trade Stroman in the next 13 days and could move Sanchez as well. The impending Stroman deal makes Borucki’s return all the more important for Toronto, as the veteran rotation candidates the front office picked up — Clayton Richard, Edwin Jackson, Clay Buchholz and Matt Shoemaker — have all either pitched poorly or been sidelined by injury.
There’s an idea..
Good stuff. Glad to see him battle back.
Finally some good news.
Borucki has a chance of being a real longterm piece in this rotation. If his health and muscle building continues, he could be a #2 in the rotation,. That is still a year or two away though – and 20 lbs of muscle.
He’s 6’4” 215lbs.
Jason Momoa is 6’4” 220lbs.
He’s undoubtedly a potential great rotation piece… but I don’t think adding muscle is what he needs. Just reps and refinement.
Dex, I don’t know where you got your info from, baseball reference perhaps?
I suggest you google a few more sites, He’s about 180lbs. Truth.
Put it this way. In sring training the Jays guide listed Vlad Jr as 200Lbs. The Sportsnet guys said he was 235lbs. In actual fact he was 280Lbs and the Jays mgmt asked him to lose weight. He has been working on it but he is stuck at 265 lbs for a while.
Bbref, MiLB, MLB all have him at 215. What sites need to be googled?
Baseball reference, MLB & MiLB, TSN all use the same source. Try Fangraphs, Playerswiki, Google’s own stats, foxsports, the baseball cube, etc etc.
Just look at him on the mound, he is skinny as a rail. No way he is 215, that is just more BlueJays rhetoric reproduced by mediabots.
His player wiki has him listed at 175…. but also says he was born in Tunisia…. so…..
FanGraphs has him at 175 though and a few others.
It’s true he really doesn’t look 215… but doesn’t look 175 either.
If Ryan Borucki is 215, Vlad is 345.
Not sure Borucki breaks 200. He should put about 10 pounds on, for the sake of his elbow for next year anyway.
I’ll gladly donate the 10lbs he needs or more whenever he needs it.
Hope he can keep that groove up from last year. He’s going to be a controllable rotation price for awhile. Definitely good news!