There are not many times a big league baseball club option a guy to the minors with a 1.50 ERA across 12 innings, but the Toronto Blue Jays figured out a way.

With Dylan Cease returning from the IL to start against the Phillies, the Toronto Blue Jays sent left-hander Adam Macko back to Triple-A Buffalo as the corresponding move.

The move brought out the ire of the Blue Jays fanbase on social media, and rightfully so. Cease did need a roster spot, but the club decided to hang on to a few different right-handed arms in the bullpen and instead sent the 25-year-old back to Buffalo.

Looking at the grander scheme of things, there are really only a few valid explanations as to why Macko is heading back to Triple-A (valid reasons, not justifiably good reasons, I may add).

Of the bullpen arms, he has player options at his disposal that the club could utilize to keep the bigger picture in mind.

Louis Varland, Braydon Fisher, and Mason Fluharty are in the same boat (options available), but none of them is playing at a level that screams minor leagues. Spencer Miles isn’t going anywhere because of his Rule 5 status (and again, he’s playing well enough to have earned his spot).

That leaves Tyler Rogers, Jeff Hoffman, Tommy Nance, Connor Seabold, and Simeon Woods Richardson.

Rogers isn’t going anywhere, and as much as the fanbase likely wants Hoffman gone, his underlying metrics are too good to pass up at the time, so he’s not being DFA’d.

That leaves Nance, Seabold, and SWR, who would all have to be designated for assignment to be moved to Buffalo. That alone is likely why the Jays decided to set their sights on Macko. They also have to make a similar decision tomorrow with Max Scherzer (however, that’s a different story), so none of those three are safe either for now, but to sit here and say that of the group of potential candidates that Macko is the one getting the short straw loses focus on the current picture.

The Jays are not a team putting up a great record (32-35), the bullpen currently owns a collective 3.88 ERA (14th best), and now there is just one left-handed reliever down in the bullpen in Fluharty.

What makes this roster move even more interesting is that the likes of Nance, Seabold and Woods Richardson can all be DFA’d and report to Buffalo if they pass through waivers. Per FanGraphs, each player has less than three years of service time, so they can’t reject the assignment to Triple-A and head to free agency should they pass through waivers unclaimed.

The Jays could also choose to trade or release any of the three arms, and maybe the Jays don’t want to risk losing one of these three arms to a waiver claim, but that shouldn’t be the driving force of this move. Winning games should be, and sending down a sub-2.00 ERA who has handled himself well in the big leagues goes against that policy.

Nance has been the better of the three this season, posting a 3.68 ERA across 22 outings despite missing some time on the IL. Woods Richardson was strong in his Jays debut; however, his time with the Twins left something to be desired (7.74 RA through 47.2 innings), and Seabold has struggled to find any consistency on the mound since Toronto traded back for him earlier this season.

If the Jays didn’t have Miles in the bullpen to eat up multiple innings, I would think the Jays have more reason to keep Woods Richardson around. Seabold could have easily replaced Macko here today, and he’s likely the guy gone tomorrow for Scherzer.

This is ultimately a business decision at the end of the day, and everybody knows that.

Macko produced a solid 2.94 FIP, 1.083 WHIP, and kept the walks in check with a tidy 1.5 BB/9, which was ultimately one of the things holding him back in the minor leagues for so long (plus the injuries). He didn’t get fazed by the bright lights of Yankee stadium and while the sample size is small, he kept both sides of the plate in check and allowed just two earned runs off 11 hits.

The business side of the game is why Macko is heading to Buffalo, but the biggest problem the Jays fanbase has with the move is that it doesn’t even feel like the right ‘business’ move.

There is arguably no way to explain why Seabold should own a spot over Macko from a statistical standpoint (even for just one more day), and one could easily gamble that he passes through the waiver wire. Woods Richardson’s spot on the team is questionable at best with Miles in the picture, and even so, he is likely a better candidate to get stretched out in the minors to be a starter again compared to Macko (more on that in a moment).

Nance is a tougher case to argue against, but going back to the bullpen depth, it’s a bit baffling to see the Jays put all their eggs in one basket with just Mason Fluharty as the only southpaw in the relief corps. If Joe Mantiply were around, the move would be easier to chew on, but he’s not.

Toronto could also want to try to put Macko back into a starter role, which would make this move more palatable in the long run to get him stretched out in Buffalo. He was a starter earlier in his pro career before the Jays moved him into a dedicated relief role this season. To go back against that and put him back as a starter in the middle of June doesn’t make a ton of sense, and Woods Richardson likely fits this mould better anyway, albeit he comes with the added ‘we have to DFA him tag.’ It’s likely not the reason, but it’s a possibility.

Maybe something is lurking under the surface that we don’t know from a roster standpoint, but from the outside looking in, this move raises a lot more questions than it supplies with answers.

There were other options to facilitate bringing back Dylan Cease to the big league roster, and it appears the Blue Jays have missed the mark.

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