Better know your Blue Jays 40-man: Danny Barnes

Danny Barnes was the Blue Jays 35th round pick in the 2010 draft (the same draft we grabbed Aaron Sanchez, Dalton Pompey and Deck McGuire).

Like many late round picks, Danny was put into the bullpen right from the the start of his Minor League career. He really took the the role. His Minor League record is scattered with ERAs in the 1s and 2s. His strike out numbers were almost always above 10 per 9 innings. He made slow, but steady, progress up the ladder.

He got a few MLB innings in 2016, then started the 2017 season in the Minors. Mid-April he got the call to take Matt Dermody’s spot in bullpen.

Danny’s 28 now, so he’s not young anymore.

He was terrific in the first half of the season, keeping batters to a .165/.267/.356 line. The second half didn’t go so well, .248/.333/.505. Home runs were a problem. He pitched in 60 games, but was worked harder in the first half. I don’t know if the work load was the problem or if opposing teams figured him out.

The cool thing is that Barnes was much better vs LHP (.518 OPS) than RHP (.728).

We got kind of lucky with our bullpen, some guys had a much better season than we could have expected: Tepera, Leone, Barnes, Smith. On the flip side, Grilli and Howell were terrible.

The question is:

Which is the real Danny Barnes, the guy we saw in the first half or the guy we saw in the second half?

I don’t know. I doubt that anyone knows. If he is the first half Danny Barnes, we are pretty set at the back end of the pen. Barnes, Tepera, Osuna, quite likely Ramirez. Add a good lefty and life would be good.

The answer to that would be the same as the answer to the over/under on innings. If you set his over/under on innings at 60, if he’s close to a 2.31 he’ll be over (barring injury), if he’s close to 5.33, he’ll be under. Barnes still has options, so unless he’s good, he could go up and down a bit.