Well, we’ve made it to February alive. It’s still 10 days until pitchers and catchers report, though, and a little over two weeks until the full squad practices. Actual Baseball Games* are still 19 days away.
*Baseball content not verified by the FDA
The off-season has mostly happened at this point, though. There are a couple of impact moves still possible, with Bob Nightengale insisting that the Jays are still in on Pete Alonso and Alex Bregman, but it seems like if either happens it’ll probably be an opportunistic move to grab a player whose market didn’t develop as expected and not a reflection of the core plan. I thought this week it’d be a good time to look back on last year’s roster, assess the changes, and see what we might expect this season. I’ll start today with the bullpen.
Last year, the Jay’s relief crew were atrocious. You can’t pin a shock 74 win season on any one thing, but even an average showing from the pen would have been an improvement of about 6 WAR, enough to push the team near .500. Their -2.5 fWAR was the worst in the sport by a huge margin and in fact was behind only the 2016 Reds for the worst bullpen performance of the past decade. Adjusted ERA is a little kinder, ranking their 21% below average performance only 15th worst out of 300. Still, fair to say it was an issue.
And in fact they’re lucky it wasn’t worse. The pen only had to pitch 565.2 innings, 22nd in the league. Partly this reflects solid work by the rotation, who managed to come 11th in innings pitched. The rest is down to the overall badness of the team. When you go 35-46 on the road, you get to skip a lot of bottoms of ninth innings. This year, between probably getting less lucky with health (6 starters accounted for 150 games last year) and hopefully having a few more leads to hold on the road, they’re likely going to need to find 40+ more innings.
The Changes
Out: Genesis Cabrera (62.2 IP, 3.59 ERA, -0.5 fWAR), last year’s bullpen innings leader, is now on a minor league deal with the Mets. Trevor Richards (48.0, 5.06, -0.1) is in the Cubs’ system, as is Nate Pearson (40.0, 5.63, -0.1). Ryan Yarbrough (31.1, 2.01, 0.3), acquired at the deadline, is a free agent along with former longest-tenured Blue Jay Tim Mayza (24.2, 8.03, -0.2) and the dreaded Mitch White (10.0, 5.40, 0.0). Closer Jordan Romano (13.2, 6.59, -0.3) signed a one year deal with the Phillies. Bowden Francis (26.2, 4.39, -0.1) is still a Blue Jay, but he’ll be firmly in the rotation.
Romano is a loss. In retrospect, it’s surprising that the Jays didn’t tender him at around $8 million, given that he ultimately signed for 8.5. When he’s anything close to healthy, Romano is a borderline elite closer, with a career 2.90 ERA and 105 saves and a 90.5% save/hold rate. At 32 and with shoulder problems, it’s fair to wonder how often he’ll be close to healthy from hear on out, though.
Yarbrough also proved surprisingly handy after being acquired from the Dodgers for Kevin Kiermaier’s remains, but accounting for his inevitable regression he’s probably replaceable.
All Francis had to do to earn a job as a starter was have arguably the best month in modern history. He should be a big part of the plan, but not in the bullpen.
Everybody else is either definitely replaceable, or an actual addition by subtraction.
Still Here: Chad Green (53.1, 3.21, 0.0), Zach Pop (48.1, 5.59, -0.7), Brendon Little (45.2, 3.74, -0.3), Erik Swanson (39.1, 5.03, -0.7), Ryan Burr (27.1, 4.28, 0.2), Tommy Nance (22.0, 4.09, 0.1).
Green’s a major wildcard for this season. His 3.21 ERA looks very good, but it’s hiding a collapse in his K rate from 31% to 22%. He still threw as hard as usual last year, and his stuff and command still grade out very well, so hopefully he can maintain the ERA and bring the peripherals back into line.
Erik Swanson is another question mark, but one I feel more confident in predicting a bounce from. His son Toby was hit by a car late during spring training last year, and while he was thankfully ultimately OK, Swanson obviously had bigger things than baseball to think about early in the season. Combined with a forearm strain, he got off to a nightmare start, posting a 9.22 ERA through 13.2 innings into mid-May. He looked like himself following a reset in Buffalo, though, with a 2.55 second-half ERA supported by his usual strong K rate. I think he’ll be fine in ‘25.
Little, Burr, and Nance represent a pretty successful summer working the waiver wire for the Jays. Burr in particular seems to have found something by lowering his arm slot a little and scrapping his mediocre slider and cutter for a harder breaker that’s about the average of the two old pitches but more effective than either. Little is the #1 lefty in the pen right now, although as a splitter merchant Swanson has been a reverse splits guy for his career and can effectively fill a lefty role.
Pop is around, but hopefully spends most of the year on the far side of Niagara falls.
The New Guys: Jeff Hoffman (66.1, 2.17, 2.0), Yimi Garcia (39.0, 3.46, 0.4), Nick Sandlin (57.2, 3.75, -0.7), Yariel Rodriguez (86.2, 4.47, 1.0), Nick Robertson, Josh Walker, Michael Peterson, Easton Lucas, and Richard “do not abbreviate Richard” Lovelady (about 90 combined, high, low)
Hoffman isn’t 100% new, in that he was the Jay’s first round pick back in 2014. He’s been incredible the past two years in Philadelphia, posting the fifth highest fWAR and eighth best ERA among all relievers in that span. Some vague worries about his shoulder scuttled bigger money deals with Atlanta and Baltimore, landing him 3/$33m in Toronto instead. He’s healthy right now, and if the shoulder isn’t a near term problem he looks to be one of the best closers in baseball.
Yimi is hardly new at all, having been the Jays’ best reliever last season with a 2.70 ERA in 30 innings. Unfortunately, elbow issues blew up his season after he was traded to the Mariners at the deadline. He’s back in Canada on a two year, $15m contract. When healthy, he’s a high quality setup man.
Sandlin is interesting. The throw-in in the Andres Gimenez trade is a side-armer who lives of the big horizontal run on his 4-seamer, splitter and slider. he doesn’t miss a ton of bats, but has put together a good career on weak contacts and pop-ups. That ability faded a bit last season, but his pitches don’t seem much different, so the Jays have reason to hope he can keep being the effective if a little homer-prone middle innings guy he was in Cleveland.
Rodriguez is an internal addition, moving over from the rotation with the addition of Max Scherzer. He was inconsistent and sometimes injured as a starter last season, but his stuff, especially his fastball and slider, is good. I think he’s a guy who’ll benefit from being able to air it out a little in shorter bursts, with the ability to lean on his better pitches, throw a bit harder, and camouflage his below average command.
Robertson, Walker, Peterson, Lucas and Lovelady are this year’s crop of waiver wire and minor league free agent acquisitions. None are particularly exciting, but all have options, and there’s always hope that a new coaching staff will unlock something.
The Outlook
This looks like a better group, although one with risks. Hoffman/Garcia/Swanson/Green looks like a solid back end, although it relies on two bounce backs and the health of two guys with question marks. Sandlin and Rodriguez should do good work in the middle innings, and Burr and Little looked like credible role players last year. The depth isn’t exciting, but then very few teams’ relief depth is. Fangraphs’ depth chart has them in a four-way tie for 15th in expected WAR. I think that’s right as a projection, but in practice I think it’ll either wind up better than that because Swanson and Green do bounce back and Garcia and Hoffman are mostly healthy, or we’ll end up seeing a lot more Easton Lucas than we’re comfortable with because of a combination of health and ineffectiveness and they spend another season near the bottom of the table.
This is one area where another meaningful move before spring training seems reasonably likely, and I think it’s a place where one more decent signing could make a lot of difference.