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The Blue Jays’ Aaron Sanchez pitches against the Red Sox on July 19, 2017.Charles Krupa/The Associated Press

It began during spring training, a small blister on his right middle finger that developed into such a monumental headache that it ruined the season for Aaron Sanchez.

Four stints on the disabled list, surgery to have half his fingernail removed, bleeding all over his uniform in front of more than 40,000 hometown fans back in April and now this: the decision to just pack it in.

Better to do it now, Sanchez figures, with just 17 games left in what is already a lost season for the Toronto Blue Jays, and hopefully get the finger back under control by the time next season rolls around.

"I'm trying to take care of that now because when I pick up a ball I'm slamming the door" on everything that happened this year, Sanchez said emphatically on Monday. "I don't even want to look at my finger, that's how irritated I've been with all this stuff."

Actually, the decision to terminate his season was made for Sanchez after he visited Dr. Thomas Graham, a leading hand surgeon in New York, on Friday.

Graham told the pitcher that he was suffering from a pulley sprain (a damaged ligament) to the same finger that Sanchez had unknowingly – likely for most of the season – been dealing with simply as an offshoot of the blister problem.

"The issue is the blister," Sanchez said, later adding: "The only reason why this pulley sprain came up is because of the blister."

The cure for a pulley sprain is complete rest of the affected finger for several weeks.

Armed with this information, the Blue Jays announced late on Sunday night that they were shutting down their right-hander for the remainder of the season.

"It's a very, very small injury, so that's the good news," Toronto general manager Ross Atkins said. "But we still want to learn as much about it as we possibly can."

In the meantime, Sanchez's season is kaput before it even really had a chance to start.

As the 2016 earned-run leader in the American League (3.00) with a sparkling 15-2 record, the Blue Jays were relying heavily on his presence to help carry the rotation this season.

Instead, Sanchez landed on the disabled list on April 15 after just two starts. He would later have part of the nail removed in Kansas City.

He was activated to the lineup on April 30 and would get the start at Rogers Centre against the Tampa Bay Rays.

But the surgically repaired nail – at least what was left of it – split, and with blood freely seeping from a bandage on his finger, Sanchez could only get through one inning of work.

The next day, he landed back on the DL in a sequence that would play out two more times before he and the Blue Jays decided he should quit the season for good.

In the end, he only got into eight games and pitched a total of 36 innings, finishing with a 1-3 record.

Sanchez said he is not certain when the ligament problem started to crop up during all of this, but suggested it could have been as early as the April 30 game against the Rays.

A blister epidemic has taken Major League Baseball by storm this season, affecting pitchers such as Rich Hill of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Corey Kluber of the Cleveland Indians and even Sanchez's teammate Marcus Stroman.

Some have suggested that the construction of baseballs has changed, a claim MLB insists has no merit.

Sanchez has said in the past that something has to be causing all the blisters – he's just not sure what.

"Everybody else has complained about it – I don't need to add to it," he said. "Baseball knows, MLB knows what's going on, in terms of people having assumptions that things are different. They'll figure it out."

In the meantime, he just wants to get on with his baseball career, blister-free.

"It is what it is," he said. "I'm not going to beat myself up over it. I can't control that my finger is the way it is. I can't control that I've been getting blisters.

"Like I said, this game is already hard enough to get guys out. If I'm going to complain about this, I'll drive myself crazy. That's one thing I'm not going to do."

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Roberto Osuna was among seven replacement players selected Friday for the all-star game in Miami on Tuesday. Osuna, who will play on the American League team, says he did not expect to be chosen.

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