Aaron Sanchez

Blue Jays righty Aaron Sanchez has changed representation, hiring the Boras Corporation as his new agency, according to Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae (via Twitter).

Sanchez, 24, is due to earn just over the league minimum for the coming season, as he’ll fall shy of Super Two eligibility. But he’s set to reach arbitration next fall, and could well end up in search of a big number through the arb process if he can match his stellar 2016 season.

Of course, the talented youngster could also theoretically represent an extension candidate before he reaches his third year of MLB service. Scott Boras is notoriously hesitant to sell his client’s free-agent-eligible campaigns to lock in guarantees, though there certainly have been exceptions.

Among his many other clients, Boras reps just-extended Nationals’ pitcher Stephen Strasburg, who signed his deal in the final season before he’d have reached the open market. Sanchez will join an interesting stable of young arms with the Boras Corp., including Gerrit Cole, Lance McCullers Jr., James Paxton, Carlos Rodon, and Julio Urias. Among Sanchez’s recent teammates, only Franklin Morales and Ezequiel Carrera share the same agency.

Perhaps the chief question for Sanchez, though, isn’t a matter of talent or his contract situation — at least, not directly. Instead, it’s how he’ll bounce back after tallying 203 2/3 innings (including the postseason) in his first full year as a major league starter. Sanchez had spun just 102 frames in 2015, when he spent most of the year working from the Jays’ bullpen, and had never before exceeded 133 1/3 innings (which he reached in 2014) over a pro season.

There’s plenty of reason for optimism for Sanchez, who finished seventh in the American League Cy Young voting at the end of the ’16 season. He logged a 3.00 ERA over his 30 starts, posting 7.5 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9 while allowing just 161 hits. Though his four-pitch mix (led by two mid-nineties fastball varieties) hasn’t produced spectacular whiff rates (8.2% in 2016), Sanchez generated a 54.5% groundball rate.

There certainly are some questions about Sanchez as a pitcher, of course, even beyond the arm health. It remains to be seen whether he will continue to maintain an exceedingly low batting average on balls in play; he sat at .267 last year, but wasn’t particularly dominant in terms of the type of contact he allowed. (He permitted 30.3% hard contact, just less than league average; see here for a late-season discussion of exit velocities involving Sanchez.) He has shown some growth in the swinging-strike department, but it’s not yet clear if he can continue to move the needle in that regard. And then there’s the matter of platoon splits, which bears watching. Sanchez wasn’t hurt much by lefties last year, perhaps because they put up only a .255 BABIP against him, but he was much more prone to walk or surrender a dinger to a southpaw hitter.

After months of debate surrounding emerging Blue Jays ace Aaron Sanchez, the team has made the decision to deploy a six-man rotation featuring Sanchez, Marcus Stroman, J.A. Happ, Marco Estrada, R.A. Dickey and newly acquired Francisco Liriano, per Toronto GM Ross Atkins (via Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi).

As Davidi points out, the solution isn’t perfect, as even with a six-man structure, Sanchez figures to make another eight starts or so, which would push him to 180 innings even if he tossed only five innings per outing. That wouldn’t factor in the postseason, either, and an ideal scenario for Toronto would include Sanchez starting well into a deep postseason run. It’s a similar conundrum that the Mets faced with Matt Harvey last season, though Sanchez isn’t coming back from Tommy John. Rather, he’s simply looking at a massive increase in his workload after throwing a total of 133 1/3 innings in 2014 (a career high) and an even smaller total of 102 innings in 2015. President of baseball operations Mark Shapiro recently told the media that there’s “no scenario” in which Sanchez would be allowed to pitch 220 to 230 innings, and indeed Atkins said that the team plans on avoiding such an extreme spike in his innings.

Atkins suggested to reporters that in addition to the six-man rotation, the Jays will be able to leverage expanded rosters in September in order to perhaps further limit Sanchez’s innings in advance of what the Jays hope will be a deep playoff run. He also implied that Sanchez’s ability to continue bouncing back from starts will impact the plan for the remainder of the season, stressing the importance of remaining “fluid and flexible” in this type of situation. “We have all the math, of course,” said Atkins in reference to various innings projections for Sanchez. “Like I said, we’ll get into an area, hopefully we get into that area. He feels good, he’s recovering well, we’re not seeing fatigue in any way and (if) we get into an area that’s unprecedented, we’re hopeful that happens.” Davidi goes on to report that the Blue Jays have been extensively studying dramatic innings increases from years prior, specifically examining Noah Syndergaard and Jon Lester, among others.

Of course, keeping both Sanchez and Liriano in the rotation comes with other roster construction implications. With six starters on board, the Blue Jays will have to either utilize a three-man bench or a six-man bullpen between now and Sept. 1, when rosters expand. The former of those two options is the current alignment, as can be seen on the Blue Jays’ depth chart, leaving the club with a bench consisting of light-hitting Josh Thole, defensive specialist Darwin Barney and a resurgent Melvin Upton Jr. With Troy Tulowitzki attempting to play through a chip fracture in his thumb and Jose Bautista fresh off the DL due to a foot injury, the possibility exists that the Blue Jays could be stretched thin on the position-player front, though rookie right-hander Danny Barnes could be optioned back to Buffalo should the need for an additional bench player arise.

In 139 1/3 innings this season, the 24-year-old Sanchez has pitched to an American-League-leading 2.71 ERA with 7.6 K/9, 2.6 BB/9 and a 57.5 percent ground-ball rate that trails only his own teammate, Stroman, among qualified Major League starters this season.