Casey 'Dirty' Janssen had been the Blue Jays star prospect since they selected him out of UCLA in the fourth round of the 2004 draft. Janssen rose very quickly through the ranks of the organization, destroying A and AA ball, with a minuscule 2.75 ERA over 2005, and a combined 24BB/183K; a 7:1 split between strike outs to walks. Janssen was more human in 2006, being roughed up over nine starts in AAA, but when A.J. Burnett went down with an injury, Janssen was promoted from the Syracuse Chiefs and made his major-league debut against the Baltimore Orioles on April 27, 2006.
In his first major league season, Janssen pitched in 19 games, including 17 starts, and logged 94 innings pitched. He didn't set the world on fire, with a 5.07 ERA and a 2:1 ratio of strike outs to walks. He had the potential to start in 2007, but the needs of the bullpen saw him step into a setup and long relief role, and emerged with a monster season. Logging 72 2/3rds innings out of the bullpen, he posted just a 2.35 ERA, and managed to rein in his tendency to allow home runs and baserunners.
Janssen throws six different pitches, although not consistently: a four-seam fastball in the early 90s, a two-seamer, a cutter, a curveball, a change-up and a slider. None of these qualify as a true 'out pitch', and instead, much of Janssen's success in 2006-2007 was from inducing groundballs and mixing speeds and location to disrupt the hitter's timing. Not likely to return to his strike out days, Janssen lives and dies by his control, something that with runners on base, his focus isn't always iron clad.
Following his surgery for a torn labrum in 2008, there's a huge question mark on whether Janssen will be ready to come back and be effective in 2009. While there is a lot of support for Janssen to return to the bullpen role that he was so effective in during 2007, he was drafted as a starter, and served his first season in that capacity. There's no doubt that he'll come into spring training as a potential starter, and if his shoulder has recovered, the Jays would be comfortable using his experience to fill the role.
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