TAMPA – As he strolled through the Toronto Blue Jays clubhouse one recent morning, Trent Thornton was stopped by a teammate who patted the right-hander on the chest and gave him an approving nod.
“Yeah, I’m super-big now,” Thornton said, grinning in self-deprecation at the hyperbole.
He may not be all swole, as the kids say these days, but the 26-year-old favourite for the fifth starter’s job is certainly stronger this spring after dramatically intensifying the amount of weight he pushed around during his off-season workouts.
The regimen, created for him by the Blue Jays, was vastly different from those in years past, when he’s “been nervous about getting bulkier” out of fear it would come at the expense of his athleticism. The key was finding a balance in order to build up more so he’s better prepared to withstand the rigours of hauling starter innings over the course of a big-league season.
“I’ve stressed flexibility my whole life so I wanted to make sure I was doing everything necessary to keep that flexibility and range of motion,” Thornton said. “Normally, during the off-season prior to this one, I hadn’t gotten much treatment or soft tissue (work) and now I was going twice a week, making sure my muscles were loose.
“Deadlifts were one of my biggest things, getting my legs stronger. I definitely focused on my lower half, but everything I did, I intensified the weight. I’m not saying I’m jacked by any means, because I’m not, but I wanted to prove to myself that I’m stronger than I thought I am, so I pushed myself harder as far as actual weight goes.”
The looming grind will actually determine how many dividends he reaps from all that.
More immediate feedback on another winter focal point, honing his changeup, came Saturday during two clean innings of work in the Blue Jays’ 2-1 win over the New York Yankees in their Grapefruit League opener.
Thornton was a little wild out of the gate, walking leadoff batter D.J. LeMahieu, before settling quickly and retiring six straight. Most important from his vantage point were the three changeups he threw that “felt really, really good.”
“I got a swing and miss,” he continued. “I threw one for a ball, but it was a strike-to-ball type pitch, depending on what the count was. And I got a weak contact…
“It has been the worst pitch for me every year,” he added later. “To feel that confident in it, this early, is definitely a good sign for me because I think it can open up a big door for me just being able to play other pitches off that. It’s another huge weapon because I think the changeup is one of the best pitches in baseball.”
To put that in perspective, Statcast data doesn’t identify a single change he threw in 2019, when he was the only Blue Jays starter to both start and finish the season in the rotation and led the team with 154.1 innings pitched and 149 strikeouts.
Thornton’s primary weapons are his fastball, slider and curveball, all thrown at an 88th percentile spin rate that suggests significant upside for the offerings. He’s also throwing a two-seamer and a cutter, but fastball command, something that was rusty Saturday, remains pivotal.
“I know my stuff plays, my stuff is good enough,” he said. “If I’m behind in counts, it doesn’t matter.”
A reliable changeup helps a pitcher control bat speed and can sometimes be used to get easy outs early in the count. Thornton began tinkering with the pitch toward the end of last season, when he began copying some of Clay Buchholz’s grips.
“I didn’t just pick it up, I stole it from him,” Thornton quipped of how he’s now gripping his change, which “fades down and away (from righties) and plays off the two-seam that I picked up as well.”
“It’s just coming out of my hand much better on a more consistent basis and that’s the biggest thing for me, because I would cut changeups,” he added. “I would just throw them in the first, miss up. But now I’m getting that pretty consistent action with it where I can pretty much put it where I want to.”
Manager Charlie Montoyo pointed to the change as one of the afternoon’s highlights for Thornton, pleased enough to add that, “I’m hoping he builds from that and takes it into the season.”
The exact role for Thornton is officially undetermined, although given all he accomplished last season he’d really need to show poorly and have someone pitch him out of a job.
Still, he’s wisely taking nothing for granted, saying the ostensible competition with Shun Yamaguchi and the delayed Ryan Borucki, who is set to start playing catch Monday after experiencing elbow tightness, “lights a fire under your butt.”
Hence the work this winter, with visions of not only surpassing his inning total but also bettering the nine quality starts he delivered as a rookie, an important personal measure of performance.
“It was a little hard to do last year because I was on a pitch count and I was on an innings-limit type thing, but if I have a quality start, I’m doing everything right,” Thornton said. “I’m getting deep into the game, I’m giving the team a chance to win and I’m most likely getting guys out. That’s what I look at, not necessarily ERA. Strikeouts are nice, but if I can keep the team in the game, I’m doing my job as a starter.”
By simply surviving last year, Thornton more than accomplished that. He’s looking for more now, trusting in the work he put in over the winter to help ensure it happens.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
