OverDrive - Griffin on Bieber's introduction with the Blue Jays, the rotation lineup and Schneider's significant impact

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

GriffsThePitch.com Columnist Richard Griffin joined OverDrive to discuss Shane Bieber's debut with the Blue Jays and his fit on the mound, transitioning in the rotation for the team, Trey Yesavage heating up with the Bisons, the pitching priorities on the roster, John Schneider's coaching season and more.

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apply. Griffiths here. Richard Griffin, Griff's The Pitch.com, is the website, and Exit Philosophy is the podcast. Griff, welcome. How are you today?

I'm good, boys. How are you guys? We're getting through this. So, Shane Bieber, debuting with the Js, you've been around this game for a long time. This debut,

where does it rank for you? I think you could compare it to David Cohn when he came in in 1992 and they went on to win the World Series because David Price is a different story. He was one of many

who came at the trade deadline. So it wasn't like there was one guy and he was the savior moving forward. But in this case, you've got a guy, David Cohn came in, made his first start for the Jays on August 29th, and then had seven more starts. His first two starts, he gave up 14 runs or 12 runs in 12 and 2 3rd inning, so they were not a great success. I'm not saying that Shane Bieber is going to be like that. But that's the closest comp I can get is David. and it really stirred the clubhouse up in terms of wow this organization this team this front

office is really trying to win and they brought a former si young winner and david cone in and i think that's the best comp so obviously another former si young winner in shane beber griff and we just had jim duket on and he and he was saying look it's it could be really exciting it could be really intriguing but, you know, Jim as a long-time baseball executive has a measure of skepticism that a guy who hasn't pitched in 507 days and has been through Tommy John, and no matter how good he's looked in the minors, there may be some growing pains here as he gets back to the Major League level. I mean, what's your expectation on that front, Griff?

Well, I think that the things he's got going for him getting to this point in Miami is that he's going to have better defense and he's going to have adrenaline. in. And I think those two things together. In his last start at Buffalo, he had pitched six innings and 75 pitches, and that should have been enough for the Blue Jays to shut him down and get him ready for Miami. But he talked his way back out for a seventh inning through 15 more pitches, reached 90s. And I think that's a realistic goal for him here. I mean, Tommy John's surgery isn't a giant shadow that it used to be over a player's career. And even though, Tommy John is still the all-time winning his pitcher post-Tommy John.

The surgery has improved, and he's been 16 months between Major League starts. I think we can expect the Shane Bieber of 2021-22 before his elbow started fraying too badly. As a pitcher, when he joins a team, obviously you've got to get comfortable with the surroundings and all that stuff, But how long is it take for a pitcher, especially at this level, to get comfortable with his catcher and the flow and the pace and the rhythm that he's trying to help out the pitcher make his calls? Yeah, I think the fact that he's really spent 22 days with the organization, and I know he's gone down and made some starts, but he comes right back up to the dugout, and he talks, you see him on the rail talking with Max Scherzer and talking with Chris Bass, Batchett, and talking with Jose. Burrios. And I think that the comfort level with Alejandro Kirk will be easy because he steals pitches at the bottom of the strike zone. He commands the framing. And I like to call it presentation, not framing because if you present it to the umpire with respect, you'll get more calls that

way, rather than those guys who jerk the ball back to the middle of the plate and look over their shoulder to see if the umpire fell for it. But I don't think that Alejandro Kirk will have difficulty dealing with Shane Bieber. He's caught him in the pen. He knows what he throws. They go over a game plan for the Miami Marlins.

I think it'll be great. I expect good things for 90 pitches, and if he gets to six innings, it'll be a success. Graf, I really like your David Cohn analysis or comparison, just because it brings me back to where the Js were back then, and

like a two or three-year build into eventually winning back-to-back world series titles. Aside from the obvious, the pitcher, Bieber and Cohn, would you equate what the Js have and the rest of their roster to what they had back then? Yeah, I really, you know, offensively, I think it's hard to match up 92 and today's team when Vlad's healthy and probably a good thing

that they're giving them an extra couple of days' rest. but I think that the pitching staff, the starting rotation, in 92, David Cohen was joining Jack Morris, Juan Guzman, and Jimmy Key. And so the starting rotation then was veteran, the starting rotation now is veteran. I don't think it's a big issue that Eric Lauer is going to the bullpen. I've studied the rest of the schedule, and you can get, Four of your start, if you go to a modified six-man rotation using the off days for like sitting Eric Lauer on a turn through the rotation like they've told him and he's available in Miami, if you do that, you've got four guys making six starts, two guys making five starts, including Eric Lauer.

And I think that that will benefit the Blue Jays pitching in October more than having guys going every fifth day. And to say that, oh, they have a routine and they need to be on their five-day routine, I don't buy that at all. I talk to Jose Burrios, who is the bell cow in this regard. And if he gets the 32 starts, which he will under this modified plan, if he gets to his 32 starts, which amazingly would be the seventh full season in a row that he's hit exactly 32 starts, I asked him the question, and he smiled broadly, and he said, yeah, that's good with me.

So even though they say they want the ball every fifth day, I think that extra day will benefit the team and will benefit the bullpen as they go deeper into games. Another guy turning heads down in Buffalo Griff, is Trey is Savage, eight strikeouts in his most recent outing with the AAA Bisons, just walking a couple, hitting 93 with the fastball. We've seen this guy rocket shipped through the minors this season.

And what's your sort of Jerry's percentage that he finds himself in the major leagues playing a significant role down the stretch or into the playoffs for the Blue Jays? Well, there's a guy who's a better comp to David Price than is Shane Bieber because David Price with the Tampa Bay Rays was drafted out of Vanderbilt, came up as the first draft pick, first overall pick. And then as a rookie starter, he came up and helped him out in the bullpen in the final month. and through the playoffs in their only World Series appearance. And there's a better cop. I think Yosavich has a chance to be that guy who can come up and log some innings in the postseason when we've all seen for the last 15, 20 years

that the bullpen's become ever more important, the deeper you go into October. So he could be that guy who comes in in a big situation. They need him for more than three outs, and he goes out there and he has great stuff. and is able to get the strikeouts or ground balls. And that's a better comp to David Price. Outside of, you know, the starters going longer to help out the bullpen,

is there something tactically that, you know, that Schneider and the pitching coaches can kind of help the bullpen with to get kind of feeling good about themselves that they head deeper into this season in the playoffs? Yeah, that's probably the biggest concern for the Blue Jays heading down the stretch is the fact that Brendan Little, I don't know if he's just breathing or working on fumes, but his command of the strike zone, he needs hitters to chase. And the better teams that you face, the fewer chases you're going to get.

So there's your number one left hand. And if he can't throw strikes, if he can't get ahead in the count, that becomes a problem when it comes down to crunch time against the best teams. And Sir Anthony Dominguez, same thing. He has some command issues that he needs to iron. out. Louis Barland, he goes right after hitters, which can be dangerous because he's given up a couple home runs. And I know Fetchuk was talking earlier about home runs being the Achilles heel of this pitching staff. And that's pretty accurate. I mean, how often can you walk

justice or Aaron Judge? How often can you walk Aaron Judge in the playoffs so that he doesn't damage you with the home run ball? And Yeah, so the bullpen is an Achilles heel, and they're going to have to have guys step up their performance if they're going to go deep. Yes, the judge is justice. Now, Griff, for context, you and I can remember when Tommy John had the surgery

and then got the surgery named after him. So when we talk about Shane Bieber tonight, what are your expectations? I'm just looking for command and control, and obviously there's a pitch count. Well, they gave him the full, lot of starts on his one-month injury rehab. I was surprised that he made that last start in Buffalo because I thought he was ready to go.

But then that would have to do with the fact that they've got five legitimate starters and they didn't really need him at that point. So the fact that they gave him that much time, the fact that he's had 16 months since Tommy John's surgery, which they say 12 to 15 is how much a pitcher would need normally. So he's beyond that. And that extra month was taken working on his command at AAA in both the Guardians and the Blue Jays organization. So I think he's ready to throw 90 with command, throws 93, 94 miles an hour, and if he can locate it, then he should be – it'll be interesting to see because, like I said, about David Cohn, his first two starts were shaky because he was with a new organization and maybe was having trouble adjusting. and it was a shock to him going from the Mets to the Blue Jays.

But in this case, there's been time to prepare. There's been time for Bieber to be ready, and I expect the best. Hey, Graf, we had Jim Duquette on. We were talking about a lot of things, and a point he brought up, you know, at a moment like this, we're talking about pitchers, and we're talking about hitters. We talk about players an awful lot.

But when the playoffs arrive, we often start talking about managers, and managers' decisions, and why did he pull this guy? Why didn't he pull this guy? And Duquette sort of gave the nod in his assessment of the American League. If he was sort of picking strategists in the dugout, he thinks A.J. Hinch may have an edge over his competitors. How do you sort of handicap the American League managers, and where does John Schneider fit into that hierarchy? Well, I think it also helps the guys who are standing beside you in the dugout. and I think that that helps John Schneider.

I know that the fan bases in New York and Boston are not very high on their own managers, but I think you're right, A.J. Hinch is the best of that lot. But I think among the contenders that John Schneider might rank behind him, not close behind him, but between him and Aaron Boone and Cora. Well, what areas would you see that he'd have to bring? reach that gap, what does he have to kind of maybe rethink or just to revaluate the way he's doing to kind of

get closer to the top manager in the league? Well, I think that a lot of that has to do with your game planning, you're pitching through the course of one game. You see the opposing lineup. You say this is ideally how we're going to attack

them with our pitching staff, with our left handers. And if it doesn't go right, if there's a blip, on your plan, then you look like an idiot, and the fan base gets on you. And I think that if the bullpen straightens itself out, that's the sort of thing that would make John Schneider look better because he's got it planned.

It's just that the best laid plans, as some famous writer once said. Let's go back to when we started this story in spring training. Sontan Dara was supposed to be a big factor, obviously not. Will he come back? What's his status? Well, I don't think he'll come back and be any factor this year. But when you think about it, there are two things that save the clubhouse for the Blue Jays and the fan base, basically. One of them was signing Vlad to a 15-year deal, and that became the face of the franchise.

That showed the clubhouse that they were ready to compete, that they wanted to compete. They wanted to win now. And the other one was in the off-season trading for Santander. Nobody knew he was going to be hurt. Everybody knew that he hit 44 home runs, and that was an aspect of the game that the Blue Jay's offense was missing. And the fact that guys like Nathan Lucas have stepped up, and Miles Straw has surprised that doesn't take away from the fact

that they needed to make an off-season move. That was Santander. He's got four more years on his contract. So I think they're looking forward to next season. steer and beyond to see what they have. Griff, we were making a little light of the fact that maybe the biggest factor tonight is how the Blue Jays conducted themselves in two free nights on South Beach heading into tonight's game against the Marlins.

But you've been with the club on the road, Griffin. I don't know how many of these secrets you're saving for your memoir, your tell-all memoir of your life in baseball. But, you know, what's your experience with how teams actually handle a couple of free nights in a great city? Well, I was there in the last time that the Jays went to Miami, I was the PR guy, and, yeah, they had a night off and a day off. So the same scenario, and it's at the Fontainebleau, the Fontainebleu, or however you pronounce it. And there's a golf course on site, there's bars on site, but there's a giant pool, and everybody had their families there.

So I think the families may be the savior of the sanity of the players in terms of getting enough rest and moving forward to the three-game series. But I didn't have my family there, so I was a bit groggy for three straight days. I love it. You know, that's an interesting part of baseball. They don't see in other sports because the teams camp out in the city for two, three, four days. Their families will fly in and stay with them, essentially, for that, that, that, that time to see them because a lot of the families don't move to the community they play in

because they're never there. Yeah, it's a different, you're right, it's different even for the athletes traveling. I mean, you can even put your stuff in a drawer in a hotel room. That's the way you roll. But, yeah, the family's definitely on trips to Chicago, on trips to San Diego, West Coast, and New York, and especially Miami. They all fly in with young kids. I mean, most of these players are around 30 or in their 30,

so their kids are like around 10 years old. And, yeah, it's a different experience. It's a different athlete. And I think that they will be ready to play tonight. I don't think there's too many of those wild livers anymore in the game. I'm a throwback to the 70s and 80s and 90s. It was a different game back then. old school, Griff.

That's the way it was, right? Thanks very much, Griff. Appreciate it. All right, guys. Enjoy. Richard Griffin, the exit philosophy is the podcast. Griffshtapitch.com is the website. Seasoned gamer or just video game curious,

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