Edwin Encarnacion #10 of the Toronto Blue Jays follows through on an eighth inning home run against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium on April 9, 2015 in the Bronx borough of New York City.Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
Three games into the regular season, it's too early to start beating the drum about a crisis within the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen.
It is like trashing the new Jaguar for blowing out a tire moments after roaring out of the showroom parking lot. You just might want to rethink that strategy.
Who knows anything at this stage, really, when it comes to the strength of the Toronto bullpen.
It was a bit of a mystery coming out of spring training and it remains an enigma in the first week of the regular season.
At age 20, and never having pitched above the level of Single A before, Miguel Castro just might be the second coming of Tom Henke.
At this time, the American League club would even be satisfied with a reasonable facsimile of the dearly departed Casey Janssen.
All we know for sure, after one train wreck of an outing at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night, is that the velocity-challenged Brett Cecil is no longer the Toronto Blue Jays' closer.
At least for the time being.
Gibbons summoned the veteran lefty into his office before Thursday's series wrap-up against the New York Yankees and delivered the news.
"He was erratic, he was all over the place [Wednesday night]," Gibbons said about the outing in which Cecil came on in the eighth with the bases loaded and let three runs score on a wild pitch, a hit batsman and the winning single.
The Yankees, who were trailing 3-1 at the time, made out like bandits with a 4-3 victory.
The Blue Jays rebounded on Thursday with 21-year-old Daniel Norris outduelling Yankee veteran CC Sabathia in his first season start, leading the Blue Jays to a 6-3 victory at Yankee Stadium.
With the win over Sabathia, 34, who was making his first regular-season start in 11 months, the Blue Jays earned a 2-1 series victory over their AL East rival.
Norris went 52/3 innings, surrendering three runs off six hits to get his first major-league win.
His only rough inning was in the sixth, when he gave up home runs to Alex Rodriguez, his first since rejoining the Yankees after a year's drug suspension, and Mark Teixeira that cut the Toronto lead down to two. Castro came on to hurl a perfect ninth to earn his first big-league save.
The Blue Jays did most of their damage in the second, during which they smacked Sabathia around for five singles that counted four runs.
Edwin Encarnacion swatted his second home run of the season in the eighth inning.
Gibbons actually didn't have to demote Cecil.
The lefty actually fired himself, admitting to reporters following Wednesday's debacle that he still felt "about two weeks behind" the other pitchers.
This was in reference to the period of time he missed down in Florida at spring training, when he was sidelined with a left shoulder issue.
What other choice did Gibbons have after hearing what Cecil said? Move him into the starting rotation?
Gibbons said Cecil will remain in the bullpen and attempt to rectify whatever ails him but that his work won't involve high-leverage situations late in games if he can help it.
On Thursday, Cecil was back in action – again in the eighth and, apart from a walk, he got in and out without any of the previous day's turmoil.
Without giving him a full-time endorsement, Gibbons said for the time being the blade-of-grass-thin Castro, who can push the needle on the radar run close to 100 miles an hour with his fastball, will be his ninth-inning guy. That is, unless Gibbons needs him in the eighth inning, as he did with Cecil on Wednesday night.
If the game dictates that Gibbons brings in his best reliever to try to get the team out of a jam in the seventh or eighth he won't hesitate to do so.
Everyone knew going into the 2015 season that the bullpen was still suspect.
However, general manager Alex Anthopoulos did not exactly lavish any spending in this area over the off-season. He took a calculated risk that Cecil would be able to handle the closer's role and that the bullpen would be solidified by the additions of Castro and Roberto Osuna, another 20-year-old pitching prodigy straight from Single A.
Anthopoulos's gamble still might work out.
But with the AL East viewed as ripe for the taking, the timing of this risk seems peculiar – especially when the game plan seems so helter-skelter.
"We'd love to have somebody we could define the role" of closer, Gibbons said. "Ideally, late in the game you don't like to have to do matchup-type things. You say this is your inning, go get 'em and things like that.
"We're still kind of trying to figure some things out."
Figure things out? Isn't that why there's spring training?