Blue Jays' Brendon Little problem isn't solved yet
Blue Jays' Brendon Little problem isn't solved yet originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — It's not where Brendon Little wants to be.
The Toronto Blue Jays ' AL champion relief pitcher had to wait to begin his outing on Friday night because a large choir of elementary school students was taking the field to sing God Bless America during the "seventh-inning stretch" that was really happening in the fifth inning because these were seven-inning games in a Triple-A doubleheader.
But as Little waited to complete his jog in from the bullpen, he appeared to crack a smile. What else can he do at this point?
His MLB season started miserably, a 24.55 ERA staring back at him from the scoreboard as he was demoted to Triple-A Buffalo.
And so on Friday, he found himself in Rochester, not all that far from Toronto geographically but what had to feel a world away as far as baseball is concerned.
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Little is down on the farm to find himself.
And on paper, he has. He's yet to allow a run. A 0.00 ERA, at any level, will feel a heck of a lot better than one starting with a 24.
But an in-person look at Little reveals some cracks.
In warmups, he threw almost all breaking pitches. He seemed to be trying to find his spin. He kept bouncing them.
And then in his outing, the same thing happened. Little got ahead with fastballs that were a bit too zippy for the Triple-A hitters opposing him.
But then when he tried to put them away with anything with spin, his pitches would, at best, barely reach the plate. Multiple bounced before even getting to home.
It explains Little's walk problems at the MLB level.
It explains his hittability, too -- as the best hitters are more capable of catching up to his fastball, the lack of an effective breaking ball can ruin him.
It's not an impossible problem to solve. Little probably just has to get his rhythm in sync to create a more effective release point when he throws pitches with spin.
But even though the stats say it, Little doesn't quite look ready to return to MLB yet.
