TORONTO - For Spencer Arrighetti, the biggest October lesson came while he was stuck watching instead of pitching.
Last year, he was lined up to start Game 3 for the Houston Astros in the wild-card round, but the game never happened for him. Houston lost the first two games to the Detroit Tigers, and Arrighetti spent the end of the season in the bullpen as a spectator. He said that experience changed the way he thinks about this part of the calendar.
“That’s honestly shaped my ideas of late-season stuff as a player,” Arrighetti said. “I never want to be the guy that’s just sitting in the bullpen watching ever again.”
That mindset matters now in Toronto, where Arrighetti - acquired for outfielder Daulton Varsho at the deadline - has been pushed into a far bigger role than the Blue Jays likely imagined. He isn’t the headliner in this rotation.
He isn’t lighting up the radar gun at 94 miles per hour like he did in 2024, and he isn’t working like the same late-season weapon he was for Houston that year. But with the Blue Jays’ rotation stripped down, he has become part of the answer to whether this team gets back to October.
“Having been there once,” Arrighetti said, “it makes me more excited, more hungry to get back there. And, really, everything I’m doing right now is trying to help this team be in that same spot.”
He took a step in that direction Saturday, turning in his best outing as a Blue Jay in Toronto’s 7-3 win over the Baltimore Orioles. Arrighetti worked 2 2/3 innings and allowed one unearned run, a steady bulk-relief effort that helped the Blue Jays improve while the Cleveland Guardians lost to the Minnesota Twins. That left Toronto one game out of the American League’s final wild-card spot.
The outing wasn’t flashy, and it didn’t look like the kind of dominant finish he put together for the Astros in 2024, when he gave up only six earned runs across his final four starts and 20 innings while helping Houston win the division. Toronto doesn’t need that version right now. It needs someone who can keep things from falling apart.
That’s where Arrighetti fits.
The Blue Jays have Dylan Cease and José Soriano at the top of the rotation, Max Scherzer still offering the chance to turn back time every time he takes the mound, and Trey Yesavage (knee) and Shane Bieber (shoulder) possibly working their way off the injured list. For now, the group looks capable enough to survive if the Jays can simply keep stacking usable innings. In this crowded AL race, a few steady outings may be enough.
Arrighetti understands exactly what is being asked of him.
“I’m whatever they want me to be,” Arrighetti said. “All that matters right now is winning, especially with where we’re at in the standings. I have absolutely no ego about this.”
The results since he joined Toronto have been uneven. His ERA with the Blue Jays sits at 6.87 after Saturday’s outing, and the club lost by a combined 23 runs in his first four appearances before that game.
Since returning from a foot issue, he hasn’t been as sharp as Toronto hoped. Still, the organization knew the upside when it got him, even if the post-deadline injuries to Bieber, Yesavage and Jameson Taillon made his role more important than expected.
Arrighetti said he’s been relentless about the details behind the scenes.
“That’s why I’ve been so obsessive about the mechanics part and so obsessive about the usage and about execution,” Arrighetti said. “I truly know that there is a very, very good big leaguer here, but there’s versions of myself that aren’t competitive.”
Manager John Schneider pointed to fastball command as the key. Arrighetti leans heavily on his curveball and four-seamer, but he can mix in as many as five other pitches.
When he keeps the fastball out of the middle of the zone, his breaking stuff and off-speed pitches have a chance to draw chases. Saturday, that formula held up.
There’s also a longer view here. Arrighetti has three years of club control left after 2026, and Toronto sees him as a starter down the line.
For now, though, bulk relief makes sense for a club trying to stay alive in the playoff chase. Working out of the bullpen lets him narrow the job: identify the hitters he’s likely to face, throw his “Plan A” and “Plan B” pitches while getting ready, then adjust for the next pocket of the order when the inning turns over.
It’s a simple idea on paper. Execute in short bursts, hand the game to the leverage arms if the lead is there, and avoid the kind of bullpen collapse that can turn a winnable night into a clean loss.
That’s the danger of these games, too. One bad stretch can wreck everything.
On Saturday, Arrighetti entered in the fourth inning and helped preserve Toronto’s lead. The seven runs the offense scored made life easier, but so did eight outs from a pitcher who was willing to do whatever the team needed.
It doesn’t have to be pretty. It doesn’t have to be long.
It just has to work.
For the Blue Jays, that makes Arrighetti a key piece in the push toward October.
“Being involved in winning is way cooler than being involved in losing,” Arrighetti said.
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