What’s the role for Kikuchi in bullpen?

This story was excerpted from Keegan Matheson’s Blue Jays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The first hint of Yusei Kikuchi’s move to the bullpen came just before 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday afternoon in Toronto.

When a Blue Jays starter walks in from the bullpen prior to the game, the rest of the rotation follows behind. On Wednesday, Kikuchi was missing from that group, but Mitch White was there. Twenty minutes later, Kikuchi climbed the bullpen stairs and took a seat with the relievers.

It was official then, and after the game manager John Schneider put his stamp on it.

This move was inevitable, given how Kikuchi has been pitching. Frankly, it’s been more a matter of finding a suitable replacement, as the Blue Jays struggled to find much success with their upper-Minors rotation depth this summer. With White coming over from the Dodgers at the Trade Deadline, though, there’s an answer.

“He’s been a total pro,” Schneider said of Kikuchi. “Just in speaking to him and hearing his excitement and positivity for going into the bullpen, it was really refreshing and encouraging, not that we expected anything different from him. I’m kind of looking forward to seeing what it looks like. I know he is, I know we are. I’m appreciative of the way he went about it.”

The word “relief” might not be the best choice, and it would be a terrible pun, but perhaps it’s better to say there’s a sense of newness around Kikuchi. The rotation didn’t work, plain and simple, but now that the decision has been made, there’s nowhere to go but up in the bullpen.

Schneider says the Blue Jays will “tread lightly at first” with Kikuchi, focusing on matchups and finding him a stretch of hitters he lines up well against.

Too often, the first inning was an issue for Kikuchi. He owned a 6.86 ERA in the first, which often meant the air was sucked out of the game before his offence even had a chance to bat. Now, though, he won’t necessarily need to face a club’s best hitters right out of the gates.

Will Kikuchi’s stuff “tick up,” though? It’s the assumption we make about any starter moving to the bullpen. Kikuchi’s control is more important than anything, but Schneider actually thinks the new role can benefit him in that sense, too.

“If you look at relievers around baseball, I think the strike-throwing is a little different than a starter,” Schneider said. “Guys are banking on in-zone or out-of-zone swing-and-miss. We know that Yusei has both of those things.”

Kikuchi’s fastball has averaged 94.9 mph this season, often touching 96 mph during his starts. In a perfect world, he can ramp that up a bit more in shorter stints, perhaps touching 98 mph. Pair that with a slider, which Kikuchi has searched and searched for this season, and there could be something there. A lot of hope is involved in this, obviously, but there’s more upside here than a soft-tossing lefty.

In Thursday’s 9-2 win over the Yankees in New York, we got our first look at that theory. Making his first Major League relief appearance, Kikuchi quickly walked a batter and allowed a single in the eighth inning, but he escaped unscathed, striking out two. His fastball, in this short stint, averaged 96.2 mph and reached 97.4 mph. Uneven as it might have been, it’s a start.

Let’s keep expectations realistic here, but if Kikuchi can give the Blue Jays even some decent innings — let’s call it a low-4 ERA with fewer walks — then there’s some value to be found in his length alone. This bullpen needs an arm capable of carrying three or four innings on days when a starter struggles, and at this point, that’s Kikuchi’s path to contributing.