KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Aaron Sanchez will throw 50 pitches for Dunedin on Saturday before reporting to triple-A Buffalo to continue his rehabilitation from a right latissimus dorsi strain. He’ll start for the Bisons on Thursday, July 16 and again on July 21 at which point the Blue Jays will reevaluate whether he’s ready to rejoin the major league club or not.

Sanchez last pitched for the Blue Jays on June 5 when he threw his best start of the season, allowing one earned run over eight innings against the Houston Astros. Lingering soreness forced him to skip his next start, however, and an MRI eventually revealed the strain in the large back muscle.

The Blue Jays have had internal conversations about the possibility of bringing Sanchez back as a reliever, both to bolster the team’s bullpen and back off on the 23-year-old’s workload. But for now Sanchez is rehabilitating as a starter and should be close to fully stretched out after his second start with Buffalo.

Sanchez was one of the Blue Jays’ best-performing starters when he went down, and has a 3.55 ERA in 11 starts this season.

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Mark Buehrle and Drew Hutchison will start two of the Blue Jays’ first three games against the Tampa Bay Rays following the all-star game. Blue Jays manager John Gibbons says the club isn’t ready to divulge anything more than that about what shape the Blue Jays rotation will take after the break.

“We’re talking about it. We definitely want to get Hutch in one of those starts at home where he’s been really good. And Buehrle’s been our top guy, so he’ll pitch one of those,” Gibbons said. “We’re just not sure of the order yet. And we’re not sure who the third guy’s gonna be yet.”

So far this season, Hutchison has a 2.12 ERA in eight games at Rogers Centre, and an 8.81 ERA in 10 games on the road. Buehrle, meanwhile, has been the Blue Jays’ best starter since the start of June. He’s thrown seven straight quality starts with a 1.41 ERA over that span.

R.A. Dickey will certainly factor into the Blue Jays rotation and the club will have a decision to make regarding whether they want to get him a start against the Rays, who he’s pitched well against in his career, or against the Athletics, who play at spacious O.co Coliseum. Of course, if Dickey were to start the first game out of the break, he could get both.

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A steady rain started to fall over Kauffman Stadium around 5:30 pm Friday evening, pushing the start time of the Blue Jays’ game with the Royals back by at least an hour. Regardless of when the baseball gets played, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons feels the series is a crucial one.

“I think it’s an important weekend series for us here. It’s been a tough road trip to this point,” said Gibbons, whose club has lost eight of its last 11. “We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. There’s a couple games I thought we might win, but we didn’t win them. And even after this, we go home for three and then we go back out to California.”

Toronto will host a three-game set with the Tampa Bay Rays coming out of the all-star break before promptly hitting the road again for a pair of three-game series against Oakland and Seattle. The Blue Jays have struggled on the road this season, posting an 18-26 record outside Canada vs. a 26-18 record at home.

A series win in Kansas City would do a lot to reverse the Blue Jays’ recent slide and give the team momentum going into the all-star break. But that will be easier said than done.

“This is the top team in the American League here, so it won’t be easy,” Gibbons said. “For the most part, our offence has been shut down by some pretty good pitching lately. That’s been the key for us.”