Toronto Blue Jays: Mark Buehrle first to the ten wins mark

On the first day of June, Mark Buehrle became the first pitcher in the Majors to reach the ten wins mark on the season, following eights innings of shutout pitching against the Kansas City Royals.  So far on the season, Buehrle is now 10-1 through 12 starts with an ERA of 2.10. While he is not going to strikeout a lot of batters like Corey Kluber, another pitcher quietly having a solid season, Buehrle is doing it with quick work and soft toss control pitching.

Yesterday’s game time was a total of two hours and fourteen minutes.

In a season of pitchers heading to the disabled list for elbow tears and ruptures, Mark Buehrle has continued to truck along like it is no different than the season before.  At the age of thirty-five, he has been his same consistent self as he was with the White Sox and very briefly with the Marlins.

The average velocity of his fastball has been around 83 mph, only teammate R.A. Dickey has a softer fastball than Buehrle. Because of the velocity of his pitches, he has been drawing on more soft fly balls and weakly hit balls.  It helps that the Blue Jays have been playing well defensively too.

He also happens to be on pace this season to join fellow soft throwers Greg Maddux and Phil Niekro with fourteen consecutive seasons of 200 or more innings pitched.

While much has been said about pitching wins in baseball, the ten-win mark does bring some precedence to Mark Buehrle, and the Blue Jays as a whole, to the impressive start of the season that he has had.  Though it is only the start of June, things look to be firing the right way north of the border.

Whether it be Edwin Encarnacion at the plate or Buehrle on the mound, the Blue Jays are starting to prove slowly but surely that there may be some legitimacy to the month of May that they had.  There could be something possibly special about this ball club and so far it has been reflected on the mound at least with Mark Buehrle’s pitching.