‘I’m not here to defend Ryu.’ Sore arm or not, Jays lefty is testing Charlie Montoyo’s patience

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/04/2022 (1300 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Let us go back to the dawn of … well … Saturday and how pretty the Blue Jays were sitting.

Home-run leader in Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Saves leader in Jordan Romano

Wins leader in Adam Cimber, out of the bullpen.

Best record in the American League East.

And none of that has changed — at least as of this writing, with late games still to unwind — after an “up, way down, tied and down for the count” mid-series 7-5 encounter with Oakland at the Rogers Centre. That should be kept in mind about what is, after all, a season that’s still hardly lapping at your toes.

Upon closer examination of the first inning, we see Toronto starter Hyun-Jin Ryu appearing to have found anew the pitching form that had render him this team’s ace, back in the not-distant day, and back-to-back Cy Young Award top-three vote-getter. The form which, frankly, abandoned the southpaw at around the halfway mark last season and was certainly nowhere evident in his first mound assignment a week ago, wherein he got banged up for six runs in 3 1/3 innings.

But patience. The man has a track record, as Charlie Montoyo had stressed. Early hours, much less days, and all starters were on the wonky end of an abbreviated spring training. Pas de problem.

Ryu looked more like his old reliable self through a one-two-three opening frame, ringing up Jed Lowrie with a cutter that caught the inside corner to put a nice little exclamation point on it.

In the bottom half of the inning, the Jays got a leadoff double from Raimel Tapia — George Springer given a day off to rest his bones, though that seemed a little premature scarcely one week into ’22 — who then raced around the bases like a 10-speed bike for Guerrero’s 10th RBI, breaking on contact and making a headlong dive at the dish to score the run, Toronto 1-0.

Except it all went downhill from there — Guerrero was caught stealing to start the ball rolling backwards — and some three hours later the discussion at Montoyo’s post-game press conference was dominated by: What the heck is wrong with Ryu? How concerned are you about Ryu? Are you running out of patience with Ryu?

Oh, and as the skipper announced belatedly — burying the lede, we call it in my business — the stocky (also doughy) 35-year-old from South Korea was complaining of “arm soreness” when he came out of Saturday’s game after four innings and five runs on six hits with one strikeout, way back to Lowrie.

Forearm soreness, to be precise. He underwent some (lengthy) treatment after the game — such that he never appeared for his starting pitcher scrum — with re-evaluation set for Monday to see how he feels, and whether further medical imaging is necessary.

Arm soreness is a rather generic and broad description. Could be anything. Could also, however, explain why Ryu’s velocity, never his strong point, had tailed off further in those four innings of work in a quite dramatic backward inside spiral: three doubles bracketed around a single in the second inning with the A’s vaulting out 3-1; a two-run jack by Sean Murphy in the third; then settled down for a tidy fourth, and wasn’t even the losing pitcher of record when all was said and done.

That L was hung on Julian Merryweather, fifth arm out of the ’pen — making heavy use of those relievers are the Jays — who gave up a two-run goner to Cristian Pache in the ninth, after the Jays cranked up their long-ball bona fides in the sixth: consecutive home runs by Matt Chapman (against his former team) and Zack Collins, the Jays’ newbie catcher (DH on this day, also notched a pair of singles) drawing Toronto square at 5-5.

There was no oomph left in the tank come bottom of the ninth, just a walk and a trio of Ks to wrap and cack up.

But Ryu, there’s the rub.

Montoyo, who was ejected in the eighth for arguing over the strike zone with home plate umpire Jeff Nelson (the manager’s first toss this season, fifth with the Jays — and gotta say that was a hallucinogenic strike zone, infuriating both teams) likes to give himself chops as a forbearing sort, always emphasizing the positive and forgiving the negative. Just as he’d cut Ryu a ton of slack in his previous start. Which is fair at this point of the season.

So it was rather jolting to hear Montoyo cut to the quick with Ryu following this engagement.

“I’m not here to defend Ryu.”

Wait, what? Who is this body snatcher and what has he done with Charlie?

“He struggled with his command again, too many pitches over the middle of the plate and they made him pay.”

A sluggish fastball, a curve with no bite, and the signature changeup suddenly (not so suddenly, in fact) persistently ineffective. Ryu is a finesse pitcher who relies on location and sequencing, dealing in that previously devastating changeup where it would likely induce the most damage. But out of 53 pitches Saturday, Ryu threw the changeup only 10 times, even though his other pitches weren’t working after the opening frame.

“He’s a guy that is really good when he commands all his pitches,” Montoyo continued. “He just hasn’t been able to.”

Despite putting in extra work, despite deep-dive analysis with pitching coach Pete Walker, despite the adjustments Ryu apparently absorbed in the off-season after posting a first-half ERA of 3.56 and a second-half ERA of 5.50, with a completely un-Ryu-an 7.78 through September/October.

Also previously, Montoyo had pointed to Ryu’s body of work over a mostly stellar career, as if the past portends the future. Except it doesn’t necessarily work that way and probably most especially not for a pitcher on the slippery side of 35.

“I’m not sitting here telling you about track record anymore,” said Montoyo, the second time he offered an unexpectedly severe (for him) assessment of Ryu in that 10-minute Q&A. “He has struggled his last outings. We’re just hoping that he makes an adjustment and finds his command — because that’s what it is, his command.

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And this was Ryu pitching on an extra day’s rest, which is historically to his liking.

Depending on how Sunday’s post-pitching appraisal shakes out, Ryu might require more rest than he reckoned on in his immediate future.

Montoyo: “We’ll see how he feels and then we’ll talk more.”

Other than all that, nope, nothing has changed.

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno