Why the Blue Jays demoted a Cy Young candidate to Single-A

There are just six weeks to go in the Major League Baseball season, and while four divisions seem to be in hand the AL East and NL West are wildly up for grabs.

The Dodgers and Giants will battle for the division with nine more meetings between the two still to come, including three on the final days of the season in San Francisco. Thank you, baseball.

Let's go Whip ...

The emergence of Aaron Sanchez has been mostly a blessing for the Toronto Blue Jays this season with just a dash of curse mixed in. Sanchez is a Cy Young candidate, but an innings limit has forced the Blue Jays to find a way to slow him down.

The six-man rotation was an excellent answer and it has worked, mostly because the other five starters in Toronto were on board. Since they started using the six-man, the Blue Jays' starters have posted a 3.38 ERA, fifth-best in baseball.

However, in an effort to preserve even more Aaron Sanchez innings, the Blue Jays have optioned their young ace to the minor leagues. Put yourself in Sanchez's shoes. You're 12-2 with a 2.99 ERA and your team options you to Single-A.

You might be really angry after receiving a demotion in the midst of a monster season, right? Not Sanchez. He was on board. The trip will only be 10 days (the required minimum before a player can be recalled), and Sanchez will likely not pitch during that time. Sanchez also will not lose service time, as any player that is optioned but returns before 20 days receives all that service time back.

He will lose some money, however. As Shi Davidi reported from SportsNet, Sanchez will lose about $12,000, the difference from his major league to minor league salary while he is in the minors.

A lesser player may not have been thrilled about all of this. Credit Sanchez for thinking big picture and the Blue Jays for looking out for his future.

I met with Terry Collins on Saturday in San Francisco and the topic turned to defensive shifts. The Mets manager told me a story I had not heard before about defending pull-heavy hitters.

In 1997, Collins was the manager of the then-named Anaheim Angels, and Joe Maddon was his bench coach. Maddon came to Collins and asked him what he thought of putting three fielders on the right side of the infield when Ken Griffey, Jr. was batting. Griffey had been in the league for eight years at that point, and the spray charts Maddon had showed nearly no ground balls to the left side of the infield.

Terry Collins

Collins was convinced, and so they tried it one night. After seeing the shift, Griffey squared to bunt and popped out.

The next day around the cage, Collins ran into Griffey. Terry told him he was perfectly OK with Junior trying to bunt on the shift, because he knew it guaranteed him he wouldn't hit a home run. Griffey laughed it off and told Collins he couldn't put fielders in the bleachers, so he'd just hit the ball there.

Griffey homered that night and in the way only Junior could, he made eye contact with Collins and smiled at him as he rounded third.

Stop me if you heard me say this before: I love new MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. He's progressive, he's forward thinking and the game of baseball is in great hands.

And as much as like Manfred, I could not be more against his recent suggestions for Major League Baseball, including banning shifts, limiting relief pitcher usage and implementing a 20-second pitch clock.

All of these ideas favor offense, which without digging in may seem like what the game needs -- it does not. Runs scored are at their highest in seven years at 4.5 per game. Home runs per game are the second highest all-time at 1.16 per game. And BABIP? I know you love the BABIP -- it's .300 so far in 2016, the highest since 2007. When the baseball is being put in play,  good offensive things are happening.

Rob Manfred

Pace of play is also at the center of these ideas, which is a fair issue to address. But if we do anything to improve offense, games will not go any faster, more kids won't play the game and television ratings will not go up.

There are really simple ways to improve the pace of play. Limit instant replay challenge times. These reviews, while good for the game, take way too long. Limit the time to 15 seconds since a ruling was made to challenge and no more than a 60-90 seconds to get an answer from the New York command center.

We'd also be smart to limit timeouts. Baseball is the only sport that has unlimited timeouts. Those trips to the mound? We probably need to put a cap on those -- maybe five per game.

This season is not what the Mets and their fans were hoping for. They woke up Monday as a .500 team, one that is in third place and trailing the Washington Nationals by 11.5 games in the NL East.

There are a host of reasons why the Mets find themselves in this position. No David Wright, no Lucas Duda and no Matt Harvey are at the core. Terry Collins almost knew that a regression was coming, friends in the game prepared him for it and there was almost nothing he could do.

"I talked to Bruce (Bochy) and I talked to (John) Smoltz a lot about the season after a World Series appearance and what effects it would have on my team," Terry told me on Saturday. "They all said the same thing: The hangover is real."

There wasn't much Collins could do. A season that ended on Nov. 1 last year meant a shorter offseason. He said he could tell two weeks into spring training that his team wasn't the same. "We weren't sharp and we weren't playing well." Despite the concerns, the Mets actually had a good April going 15-7, but they haven't had a better than .500 month since.

David Wright

Remember this: After their 2011 and 2013 World Series titles, the Giants went an even .500 combined in the following seasons (162-162) and did not make the postseason in either year. Bochy said the only player who didn't seem affected by the late play in October year to year was Madison Bumgarner.

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