Jays win! and Stuff!

I decided to go ahead and write this one Thursday evening (instead of waiting on further promotions as I had intended) because I wanted to update something I'd written last night, and get ahead of the crowd of folks discussing the subject. After writing the major portion of it and taking a couple of hours away to play some Arkham Knight, I came back to the computer to find Rich Griffin had published an article on the very subject while I wasn't looking. Sigh. No real need to finish last night anymore, right? Anyway, the subject at hand was my comment about there being an opening for the Blue Jays to demote Hutchison for a couple of weeks starting on the 17th, but there's a pitching rotation machination that I'd overlooked until Shi Davidi mentioned it. If the Jays employ it they will only need Hutchinson once more before 8/29. Here's the upcoming calendar and the way they could arrange it to make that happen, and a somewhat different suggestion than Griffin's proposal which has one more August game for Hutch than mine does  (home games in bold):


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7	at New York	Dickey
8	at New York	Price
9	at New York	Estrada
10
11	Oakland	Buehrle
12	Oakland	Hutchinson
13	Oakland	Dickey
14	New York	Price
15	New York	Estrada
16	New York	Buehrle
17
18	at Philidelphia	Dickey
19	at Philidelphia	Price
20
21	at LA	Estrada
22	at LA	Buehrle
23	at LA	Dickey
24
25	at Texas	Price
26	at Texas	Estrada
27	at Texas	Buehrle
28	Detroit	Dickey
29	Detroit	Hutchinson
30	Detroit	Price
31	Cleveland	Estrada

 Serendipitously, the day after Hutch's next start is a Dickey start and if Thole comes off the DL in Buffalo on schedule (8/10) then the EASY choice for the Blue Jays (having already discussed recalling him) is to demote Hutchison and promote Thole then, and it leaves the rest of the team untouched.  Hutch will have time to get two starts (on five days rest each, in fact) in Buffalo to try and get a handle on his problems, and the only real issue is it spoils my desire to have Pompey up sooner rather than later. It would be kinda crazy for them to pass up this chance, and if Thole isn't ready then go ahead and call Pompey. There might be a complaint that you don't want a guy like Pompey to be on the bench but even if you don't give him some reps in CF, it's only 18 days and that's insignificant in terms of development time.
ETA: some speculation about that the Jays will go to a seven-man pen with Sanchez off the suspension, and that might lead to a Pompey recall, but as I write this no word.

Of course from this flows the next consideration, in terms of roster moves, and one I totally overlooked last night - the question of playoff roster eligibility. In order to be eligible you have to be on the active 25 man roster, or the DL (or bereavement, suspension, etc) by midnight August 31 in order to be eligible for the playoff roster, unless there's an injury when the playoffs begin. Most of that group will be an easy call:

Price, Buehrle, Dickey, Estrada
Osuna, Sanchez, Lowe, Cecil, Hawkins, Hendricks, Loup
Martin, Navarro, Encarnacion, Smoak, Colabello, Travis, Tulo, Goins, Donaldson, Bautista, Pillar, Revere

That leaves two spots. If Stroman's recovery goes well and he shows good in September he's in too, leaving only one. As it stands now, if you use Hutch to pitch on the 29th, and he bumps either Thole or Schultz (which, it'd be Thole because all you'd lose is that Martin would have to catch Dickey once while Thole was down for 10 days - it's not like they are taking 3 catchers to the playoffs), he'd be the only other guy eligible to be on this team other than the guy he didn't bump. And Saunders if we believe he's ever going to actually play this season.
If we want a 4th outfielder better than Colobello (and I surely do) and Saunders still hasn't played, then you have to connive to get Pompey on the roster before Sept. 1. Basically there's only two ways you can do that. The first  is if someone is on the DL. If Travis is still not back by the end of the month then problem solved - option Kawasaki on 8/31 for Pompey, then when the rosters expand you can add either Travis or, say, Diaz to protect yourself in the middle infield until Travis is ready. If Travis comes back sooner, and no one else hits the DL . . .the only other option is to play the August 31 game short (shorter than customary) in some other area and lose the guy demoted as a playoff option barring injury (if there's an injury to the playoff eligible players you can replace him with any player in the organization). My guess is that if this was the play, the guy who loses out is Bo Schultz.  That said, it wouldn't shock me if the team played it slow with Travis and let the situation work itself out.

Oh, and by the way, pretty decent little ballgame tonight in the Bronx, no? I know you don't need me to tell you that this is far and away the best Blue Jay experience since Joe touched 'em all. What I am trying to figure out is how this team keeps from playing .800 ball the rest of the season! David Price tomorrow, clear my schedule.