Yohendrick Pinango gave John Schneider offense Toronto badly needs, which is why this option to Buffalo may wind up looking like a miss.
The Blue Jays sent Pinango down on June 22 after Luis Urias joined the roster, and the move made sense on the glove side. It gets harder to defend once you look at what Pinango did at the plate in his first major-league run.
Across 120 MLB at-bats, Pinango hit .292 with a .336 OBP, a .778 OPS, 35 hits, 4 home runs, and 18 RBI. For a club still fighting for enough traffic and enough thump, that is not nothing.
Toronto's offense has been uneven all year. Through 78 games, the Blue Jays had scored 320 runs with a .313 team OBP, numbers that help explain why any bat with real life to it should get a longer look.
That is where this decision starts to feel risky. Pinango is not a finished player, but he gave them offensive output right away, and those are the exact players you usually try to keep around when the lineup goes flat.
The case against him is clear too. His defense in the outfield has cost Toronto, including the rough May 25 game against Miami when misplayed balls stretched innings and changed the night.
The Blue Jays may have picked glove insurance over offense
Schneider said after that Miami loss that the issue was outfield fundamentals, and that is fair. Pinango still looks like a left fielder learning on the fly, not a polished defender you can trust without thinking twice.
But the Blue Jays did not send down a player who was lost in the box. Even the note on the move pointed out that David Schneider's defensive flexibility and work against left-handed pitching helped drive the decision, not some collapse from Pinango with the bat.
That is why the timing stands out. Pinango had only 136 plate appearances and was still carrying a .283/.331/.433 line overall at the time of the option, which is useful offense for a rookie trying to stick.
There is a version of this move that ages fine if Urias gives Toronto needed infield coverage and the lineup keeps moving. There is another version where the Blue Jays keep scratching for runs while a hitter who was helping sits in Buffalo.
That second outcome is the one Toronto has to worry about. The Blue Jays are 39-39, not a club with room to waste offense while waiting for cleaner roster symmetry.
Pinango's glove still needs work. But when a young hitter posts a .778 OPS in the majors and your lineup still sits near the bottom half of the league in run production, sending him down can look less like depth management and more like a mistake.
Did the Blue Jays make a mistake by sending Yohendrick Pinango down?
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