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The Aaron Sanchez saga has come to an end for 2017, but the story is far from over.

Shut down for the season after the ongoing blister issues on his right middle finger led to a pulley strain of the same digit, the Toronto Blue Jays believe another extended rest is the remedy for their young starter’s troublesome hand.

But while the pulley strain diagnosis gives clarity to the discomfort Sanchez has been feeling since picking up a baseball last month and trying to ramp up his throwing program in an effort to return in the final month of the season, it does nothing to guarantee that the blister issues plaguing him will be gone.

As of right now, there is no concrete plan for how to keep Sanchez’s finger healthy when he starts his normal offseason throwing program sometime in mid-December.

“Nothing’s been set in stone,” Sanchez said Monday. “We’re back and forth with a few hand specialists to find out what the solution can be for this problem. The only reason this pulley strain came up is because of the blister.”

That gives the Blue Jays a couple more months to figure out a solution for the blister, which is the root of all of Sanchez’s problems.

“I think I’ll have an answer before I even pick up a ball on what kind of strategy or what we need to do moving forward with the blister,” Sanchez said. “I’m trying to take care of that now because when I pick up a ball I’m slamming the door on all this stuff that happened this year. I don’t even want to look at my finger. That’s how irritated I’ve been with all this stuff.”

Sanchez can’t pinpoint exactly why the latest setback occurred but he was tinkering with different grips in order to alleviate the pressure on the area with the blister, a problem that sent him to the disabled list on four separate occasions this season and limited him to just 36 innings.

Despite the ongoing problems, he’s trying not to dwell on what amounts to a lost season for the 25-year-old who led the American League with a 3.00 ERA in a breakout 2016 season.

“It is what it is,” Sanchez said. “I ain’t going to beat myself up over it. I mean, I can’t control that my finger is the way it is. I can’t control that I’ve been getting blisters. This game’s already hard enough to get guys out, if I’m going to complain about this I’ll drive myself crazy. That’s one thing I’m not going to do.

“We’ll continue to search for answers. We’ll continue to search for whatever we need to find because I’m definitely not going to let this stop me.”

Even though the Blue Jays were toying with the idea of shifting Sanchez to the bullpen if he returned this month, that was simply in an effort to get him back on the mound and pitching in game situations.