TORONTO – When the Toronto Blue Jays optioned Daniel Norris to triple-A Buffalo on April 30, one of the points they made to him was that he shouldn’t consider the demotion a setback because most players, even superstars like Clayton Kershaw, are sent down before they settle in.

The all-world Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander is about as good as a pitcher gets, yet in his first eight big-league starts in 2008, after his promotion from double-A Jacksonville, he went 0-2 with a 4.42 earned-run average, allowing 39 hits and 24 walks in 38.2 innings.

So Kershaw was optioned back to Jacksonville, allowing two earned runs in 18 innings over three starts. In his first start back, the Colorado Rockies thumped him for five runs on 10 hits and three walks in three innings, but he took off from there, going 5-2 with a 3.68 ERA over his final 13 starts.

Kershaw’s been total boss ever since.

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"I was ticked off a little bit," he says of the demotion during a recent interview, "but if you pitch good you’re not going to be sent down. I wasn’t pitching good enough. I went down for two or three weeks, came back up and it was good, I had some success down there again, you’re in less of a pressure environment to figure things out again.

"I still took my lumps when I came back, too, it’s tough to go up and down like that, but at the same time, you’ve got to figure it out."

Patience, whether it’s only a handful of starts for someone like Kershaw, or longer for the likes of Norris, Dalton Pompey and Miguel Castro, half of the six rookies the Blue Jays took north at the end of spring training, is needed with young players.

The success Aaron Sanchez, Devon Travis and Roberto Osuna – the other three Toronto rookies – have enjoyed is more the exception than the rule.

Between finding ways to maintain their confidence and managing the inherent failure each baseball player must fight through, they’ve survived some blips along the way – DL stints for both Sanchez and Travis; a few last-at-bat losses for Osuna – to not only survive, but thrive in the big-leagues.

"It’s clearly different," Sanchez says of struggling in the big-leagues versus struggling in the minors. "For me, I failed so many times at the minor-league level that I knew when I got here how to handle it. Here, obviously, you want to win every night you take the field, if you’re the reason the game is lost, the mental state of the game can drown you sometimes. It’s about short-term memory, just forget about what you did, learn from your mistakes, and take it one day at a time, really."

Adds Travis: "Looking back at it now, the biggest thing in baseball while growing up, regardless of whether it was Little League, high school, college, minor-leagues, is that all those levels are stepping stones for teaching yourself how to deal with failure, understanding that it’s a game of failure. It’s stressed our whole lives, fail seven out of 10 times and you’ll be one of the best players in the game. It’s easy to say, but all those stepping stones just help you understand that it’s true, so when you do get to the top level, you have a better understanding of how to deal with it. Sometimes it doesn’t make it any easier, but it helps out for sure."

Osuna took his fourth loss of the season on Wednesday in Oakland, getting beaten on an infield single by Ike Davis so close replays were inconclusive in the 10th inning of a 4-3 loss to the Athletics. Rather than stewing over it, he pushed it out of his mind, bouncing back to collect his fifth save Saturday in Seattle.

"I couldn’t do anything about what happened that day, after that you’ve got to think about the next game and try to do it better," he says. "All the support from the team, the manager talked to me, he said, ‘Osuna, don’t worry about it, you’re going to get the ball the next day,’ so that kind of confidence is very important for us, especially me as a rookie pitching in tough situations. Getting the support from all my teammates is very important for me."

Such positive reinforcement is one way to help young players maintain their confidence.

It’s easy for them to abandon their process when there are no results to show for their work, but trusting in the work put in is also pivotal.

"Believing, I’d say, is paramount," says Travis. "For myself, I still don’t know if I’ve convinced myself that I’m playing in the big-leagues. I’m just playing baseball. This whole year, it’s been an awesome ride, I try not to get caught up in the fact that it is on TV or that when you make an error, everyone in the world is watching, I just try to treat it like the game of baseball that I’ve always played, and do anything I can do to help the team win."

Osuna takes a similar approach to closing out games.

"I don’t think I’m in the ninth inning, ‘Oh, I’m going to face (Robinson) Cano, (Nelson) Cruz and all those guys,’" he explains. "I just try to do my job, I don’t feel any pressure about it. I try to show them I have a lot of confidence in myself. What helped me a lot is when I pitched in Mexico when I was 16, I learned a lot of things, I pitched in tough situations before, so I have a lot of confidence, and I have a great catcher behind the plate so I just try to follow him."

Imperative for Sanchez, meanwhile, is leaving work at work.

"I try to separate life and the game as much as I can because you can get so caught up in just being always about baseball," he says. "You have a bad outing, you come to the field, you’re thinking about your last bad outing, then you have another bad outing and it just spirals downward after that.

"For me, I try to escape from the game as much as I can, and when I’m here it’s time to work. When I’m gone, it’s back to normal life."

Some players figure out an approach that works for them faster than others, and some never figure it out at all. Between the physical challenges on the field and the mental tests that come both on and off it, there is so much for young players transitioning to the big-leagues to deal with.

Progress for the three Blue Jays youngsters in Buffalo, meanwhile, is coming at different paces.

Pompey, after a very slow start following his demotion, is making a strong push for a return to the big-league level, slashing .366/.434/.554 with six homers, 27 RBIs and 38 runs scored over his past 41 games at both double-A New Hampshire and Buffalo.

Norris is also making progress, although not quite as consistently. In 15 starts at Buffalo, he’s 3-10 with a 4.10 ERA and 1.494 WHIP, dominating at times, less efficient at others. A return to the Blue Jays awaits the moment he locks into his top form.

Castro, meanwhile, overcame a thumb injury and has reeled off four strong outings after a couple of rough appearances. The Blue Jays still think he’ll be a contributor this year.

"Know what you want to do, know where you want to be for the next 10 years or so," says Osuna, "you’ve got to be focused on what you want to do."

For some, it simply takes more time to learn how.