David Lorela

You know, it's like every pitcher who has six pitches, he has pitches he favors to lefties and righties, but he's throwing everything in every situation up until that last start against the Braves.

He was keeping the ball in the yard really well.

which is one way to overcome a pretty pedestrian strikeout rate, which was never his strength anyway.

But, you know, what I said now is this is just where we are in baseball history that the, you know, sort of the savvy veteran version of the superstar power ace is now throwing 97 miles an hour while also throwing the kitchen sink.

So it's still a tough assignment for the Blue Jays, perhaps not as tough as it would have been four or five years ago.

Yeah, and every body is different.

I think that we probably overrate a little bit how routine recovery from Tommy John is.

And some guys need a little bit to ramp up.

I think Sandy also missed that entire season in 2024 after having gotten surgery at the end of the 2023 season.

And so the timing of that probably favored him a little bit more than some guys coming back from TJ.

uh where he's you know he's had two full winters basically to tack on his recovery and ramp up to full strength so what we saw last year was him maybe a full physical fitness or something close to it and just you know figuring out how to pitch in his new body with his new elbow

And, you know, he's like I said, he's not all the way back, but he's a much more effective pitcher than he was last season.

Thank you.

I think it's a similar situation to Shane Bieber last year.

The longer track record since injury definitely plays a factor in there and probably raises his value in trade.

The Blue Jays gave up a pretty good prospect for a guy that you didn't really know a whole lot about and pitched kind of like Alcantara is doing now.

He pitched well, but not up to what he was at at his peak.

And I think if you go into that and look at Alcantara's performance

you know, like a number three starter in a playoff rotation, there were probably teams that need that.

And especially because you just look at the physicality, the ability to change speeds, you know, the ability to now that he's shown to adapt to throw multiple breaking balls.