DUNEDIN, FL – Not every reliever throws 100 mph. And not everyone needs to. There’s a place in baseball for "kitchen sink" bullpen arms, which is why the Blue Jays value Trent Thornton.
The 29-year-old right-hander hit his second year of arbitration this winter as a potential non-tender candidate, but Toronto offered him a contract. The Jays like Thornton’s reliability as a depth arm who can bounce between Triple-A and the bigs and is always ready to pitch on a moment’s notice.
This offseason, Thornton isn’t emphasizing any major changes to his six-pitch mix. Instead, he’s doing something a lot of pitchers around baseball have tried lately: shortening his arm action.
"I used to wrap my arm behind my back and had a lot of moving parts," Thornton said. "And that creates a bigger window for error."
The modification will even out Thornton's delivery, make it repeatable, and improve his command, particularly with his breaking pitches. Thornton said he uses a weighted ball exercise that makes it clear when his arm motion is off.
There’s been progress already.
"Historically, I used to climb with my curveball and drop with my slider," Thornton said. "Now everything's coming out of the same tunnel."
"Tunnelling" is a term you’ll hear a lot from pitchers. Good hurlers maintain identical arm actions with all their pitches, making it harder for hitters to read the ball out of the hand and decipher if the incoming pitch is straight or breaking. Given his diverse arsenal, Thornton’s makeup is innately unpredictable, but there is always room to tinker.
Feedback is important, Thornton said. He likes seeing analytics to support any changes he makes. That’s where Jeff Ware, the Blue Jays’ new bullpen coach, comes in.
"[Ware] is great," Thornton said. "If you go to him and ask him certain questions, he’s very efficient on giving you answers that are backed up by either numbers or video or whatever. He takes his job extremely seriously. So it's a good transition [from previous bullpen coach Matt Buschmann]."
Thornton has worked four innings this spring, and right now, he’s monitoring his spin rates as a gauge for success.
"When I'm throwing my sweeper and curveball, making sure that that spin’s over 3000 shows that I'm getting to the right place and time," he said.
There’s no guarantee Thornton cracks the Opening Day roster; in fact, barring an injury, he’s destined to begin his year with the Buffalo Bisons. But he still knows this group of relievers very well. At spring camp, manager John Schneider is pushing an intense "attention-to-detail" mentality. The relievers recognized the importance of that precise approach and are leaning into it as they ramp up for the regular season.
"Going through our routines, it's very specific," said Thornton. "You lock yourself in. Baseball’s a game of inches, centimeters. So [it’s about] being as perfect as you possibly can be in those situations, attention to detail, and paying attention to the little things that equate to bigger things."
Indeed, strings of small successes typically lead to grand realizations. And with a World Series in their sights again this season, the Blue Jays have a long, tedious year ahead of them.
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