Blue Jays' John Schneider Announces Change Before Reds Game

Lauer is having his best statistical season yet with Toronto, posting a 3.21 ERA, 8–2 record and a 1.133 WHIP — his career-low across seven big-league seasons.

Before Monday’s series opener with the Cincinnati Reds, manager John Schneider announced that despite Lauer’s production, he is the odd man out in the rotation and will transition to the bullpen. This marks the second time Lauer has moved to the bullpen after the Blue Jays briefly operated with a six-man rotation in August.

"Blue Jays transitioning back to a 5-man rotation with Eric Lauer in bullpen per John Schneider," wrote Sportsnet's Ben Nicholson-Smith.

Reasoning Behind John Schneider's Unexpected Change

The reasoning behind the move stems from a couple factors. On Sunday, Schneider revealed that Bieber would no longer need extra rest, as the former Cy Young Award winner had been getting six days between starts. With that no longer necessary, the team is returning to a five-man rotation.

Another possible explanation is that the Blue Jays may not view Lauer’s success this year as sustainable. On the surface, his numbers are excellent and worthy of a rotation spot, but deeper metrics paint a different picture.

While Lauer’s fastball has been solid, his breaking pitches have been hit extremely hard. Statcast’s Baseball Savant shows he allows one of the highest fly-ball rates in the league (3rd percentile ground-ball rate) and ranks in the 31st percentile in limiting hard contact.

Lauer has been a solid reclamation project, and although those underlying numbers are concerning and likely contributed to the move, he’d still find a spot in most teams’ rotations.

However, the Blue Jays are in a tight race for first place in the AL East and held the best record in the American League for much of August. Getting more starts out of the rest of the rotation is simply more important right now.