Would a part-time six-man rotation make sense for Toronto Blue Jays?

After Drew Hutchison‘s recent pitches on the road against the Seattle Mariners were battered around the ballpark relentlessly, would there be any value in the Toronto Blue Jays embracing a part-time six-man rotation?

Hutchison was shelled for seven hits, two homers and six runs in the no-decision. He lasted only four innings and his road ERA swelled up to a not-so-nice round 9.00 after 11 starts. He egregiously leads the Blue Jays with 51 earned runs surrendered on the road in 2015 over only 51 IP. Hutchison has more road earned runs attributed to him than Mark Buehrle or Marco Estrada have on the entire season.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for Hutchison. At home pitching in the Rogers Centre, he’s a valuable player for the Jays. Like his career splits with a 3.39 ERA at home and a 5.77 ERA on the road would suggest, Hutchison has been lights out spinning innings in front of home crowds. He is 7-1 with a 2.21 ERA. It’s really something of an anomaly. Rogers Centre is a renowned hitters park and balls bounce differently there given its artificial surface. But for some reason, hitters have a BAbip of only .277 there against Hutchison, while that number sky rockets to .477 on the road. Again, his WHIP this year at home is a minuscule 1.05, which inflates to 1.98 on the road.

On Saturday, Hutchison had the comfort of pitching at Safeco Field working in his favor. I say this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, ball games in Seattle when the Jays are in town are as close as a club will ever get to playing a home game on the road. Thousands of Blue Jays fans from Vancouver make the short trip south for the series and are in attendance. But also, the Mariners have a pretty ugly offense in 2015 and Safeco is a notorious pitchers park. Yet Hutchison could not get the job done.

With all hope not lost for Toronto in the division and Wild Card races, they must do something to remedy their pitching staff and accumulate more wins. After an attempt at doing so falling through as recently as reported on July 24, it might be time to find an alternative corrective measure.

With Aaron Sanchez being activated, he could serve as the away games version of Hutchison for the Blue Jays. It makes no sense to demote either of them full-time to the bullpen, what with Hutchison’s home success and Sanchez really coming on in his final four starts (2-1, 2.57 ERA, 17 K) before getting hurt.

More from Call to the Pen

Sanchez was awesome out of the bullpen in 2014 for Toronto. He could be again this year as well, but in a more limited capacity. Also, smaller workloads for Hutchison on the road out of the bullpen may help increase his efficiency and thus his confidence pitching in foreign environments. The only problem would be that after a start, Hutchison and Sanchez would probably be unavailable out of the bullpen for three or four days. But there’s an easy fix to that if the Jays choose to not do something like trade Dioner Navarro for a relief arm.

They’re currently operating with a seven-man bullpen if you include Sanchez. Trading Navarro for a relief arm would necessitate a need to call up Josh Thole to give Russell Martin the odd day off, so someone would need to be sent down. Even if a trade does not evolve, the Blue Jays could still call Steve Delabar back up to initiate an eight man bullpen with Hutchison and Sanchez serving in part-time capacities.

Currently, Jose Bautista, Kevin Pillar, Chris Colabello, Ezequiel Carrera and Danny Valencia are all logging time in the outfield. With Ryan Goins on the 25-man roster and being the best middle infield defender the club has, it would make sense to demote Carrera and use a platoon of Jose Reyes and Goins at shortstop. On days when Colabello does not play, Reyes should start in left field, or even right field if Bautista needs a day off or plays DH in a game.

Reyes has been underwhelming defensively this year. His untimely errors in games have hurt the Jays, much like Hutchison’s pitching on the road has. If the Blue Jays want to maximize their win totals without acquiring a big name arm in a trade, using Hutchison/Sanchez in a platoon for home/away starts and shifting Reyes to the outfield for occasional starts makes sense. Reyes is an athlete and would still play almost everyday. Tracking fly balls in the outfield should come naturally to him, and his throwing accuracy out there is far less important than it is at shortstop, where he has committed 13 errors and has a UZR of -2.7.

Carrera was slumping at 2-for-31 until homering in Saturday afternoon’s win versus the M’s. He’s not an exceptional talent right now for the Jays. But him in Triple-A with Hutchison and Sanchez splitting starts in something mildly resembling a six-man rotation could be far more beneficial to Toronto in the long haul — when every win is precious — than would be Carrera’s bat off the bench.

Next: Trade Deadline: 5 players with almost no value