Encouraging Report On Aaron Sanchez

3.8 wins per Fangraphs and 4.7 wins per Baseball Reference. That’s what Aaron Sanchez was worth to the Blue Jays in 2016.

In 2017 both sits pegged his value at precisely zero.

Sanchez managed to make just eight starts for the club this year, throwing just 36 innings. His ERA was 4.25. His FIP was 5.74. His groundball rate dropped from 54.4% to 47.5%. In those 36 innings he allowed six home runs. He walked 20, too.

Pitching with a nasty blister on your right middle finger will do that, it turns out. And if the Jays are going to have any chance of being good in 2018, they’re going to need him to be a whole lot closer to what he was in 2016, and on that front today they got some pretty good news:

It is, of course, very early in the process here. Playing catch isn’t the same as hucking it 96 mph with big spin. So we can’t really take a whole lot from this. But it’s at least not negative.

There seems to be a feeling out there that Sanchez is maybe a bit injury prone, but really, in his big league career it’s just been the blister thing and the oblique injury that he dealt with in 2015. I mean, neither of those things is great, but I’m not sure if they’re quite as worrying as some fans let them be. Hopefully today was the first step toward proving that so!

So… there’s that.