Article: Dillon Tate and Bullpen Arms for the Blue Jays To Consider

[Bob Ritchie]

On Thursday, Erik Swanson will visit a specialist to have his ailing arm examined. Which replacement candidates could the Jays consider if the medical prognosis is a lengthy stint on the IL?

Recently, I wrote about Erik Swanson 's importance to the Blue Jays bullpen. Although he struggled in 2024, his performance in the latter part of the season was encouraging. However, on March 10, manager John Schneider announced that Swanson would visit Dr. Keith Meister today. The good doctor is well-known in baseball circles. Last year, he performed season-ending surgeries on Alek Manoah, Ricky Tiedemman, and Brandon Barriera, among others. If Swanson were to miss a substantial portion, if not all, of the 2025 campaign, what options would be available to Toronto?

There are some internal candidates, such as Ryan Burr, Tommy Nance, Ryan Yarbrough, and the recently-signed Dillon Tate. However, given Swanson's late-inning, high-leverage bullpen role, only Tate has the experience to replace Swanson in that capacity. None of Burr, Nance and Yarbrough has more than 88 career outings that came after the sixth inning. Swanson and Tate have 196 and 145, respectively.

FanGraphs' free-agent tracker shows 15 unsigned free-agent relievers, including several well-known names. I used ZiPS Depth Chart projections for my list and selected the five pitchers with the best 2025 FIP estimates available to play now. Brooks Raley and Keynan Middleton ranked third and fifth in my FIP rankings, but the expectation is that neither will be available for the beginning of the season due to recovery from surgery. Tate ranks fourth on the FIP list after the Raley-Middleton exclusion.

Table 1 below shows some key projections. Table 2 is a summary of key 2024 metrics. Let's examine each candidate.

Joe Kelly
Joe Kelly struggled in 2024. Shoulder issues plagued him, and according to RotoWire, his shoulder is not 100%. The 3.85 FIP estimate is respectable, but his 2024 xwOBA was higher than the average MLB reliever. Despite the 2024 blip, Kelly is an accomplished reliever. Nonetheless, I ruled him out because of his age and injury status.

Craig Kimbrel
For Craig Kimbrel, 2024 was the tale of two halves. In the first half, he posted a .280 xwOBA (77th percentile) and a 26.3 K%-BB%, better than the MLB average. In the second half, Kimbrel's xwOBA ballooned to .384 (first percentile), and his walk rate ballooned to 15.6%, nearly twice the league average. He was a Baltimore Oriole during the 2024 campaign, but the Orioles released him on September 24. Like Kelly, Kimbrel performed much better in previous seasons. Kimbrel is worth considering as a Swanson replacement, but he would be a distant third choice given his 2024 second-half collapse and age.

Phil Maton
Recently, Phil Maton has been inconsistent season-to-season. In 2024 and 2022, he recorded .320 xwOBA marks. In 2023 and 2021, Maton generated much better xwOBA scores of .274 and .294, respectively. ZiPS sees him as below average in 2025. I placed Maton fourth on my list mainly due to his inconsistency.

David Robertson
The group's elder statesman, David Robertson, had a good 2024 campaign, with excellent whiff, home run, groundball, and strikeout rates. Despite his age, Robertson has been healthy, with his only lengthy IL stint occurring in 2020, when he missed the season because of Tommy John surgery. ZiPS expects him to run the best FIP and strikeouts-minus-walk rate among the five relievers. Robertson's low home run rate is attractive because in 2024, the Blue Jays posted the highest rate among all bullpens.

There are two negatives to Robertson's candidacy. First, he may be expensive. FanGraphs' estimated deal is one year, $10 million. However, since Opening Day is approaching, Robertson's market price could be lower. The second negative is age. At 40, his performance could fall off a cliff, particularly with no spring training game action. All things considered, Robertson would be my top choice.

(A hat tip to Marie Illerbrun for suggesting candidate Robertson to me.)

Dillon Tate
The Blue Jays announced Tate's signing yesterday, and he is an interesting candidate. In his five-season career, his .300 xwOBA is better than than the league's .315 mark over the same period. His FIP is 3.98 is also more than a quarter of a run better than average. Notably, Tate missed the 2023 campaign due to arm issues. He returned in 2024 with the Orioles and posted a 3.57 FIP in 29 1/3 innings before July 1. Tate stumbled in July, and Baltimore demoted him. Baltimore designated Tate for assignment in August, and the Blue Jays claimed him off waivers on September 1. Tate generated a 3.47 FIP in 3 1/3 innings for the Blue Jays. but, the ballclub granted him free agency on November 22, 2024.

Tate is a three-pitch pitcher: sinker, sweeper, and changeup, throwing the sinker just over half the time, the sweeper a third of the time, and mixing a changeup 13% of the time. In 2024, Tate's sinker fell to 92.6 mph, after averaging 94 in 2022. On the other hand, his sinker's average velocity was 91.6 in the first month of the season (121 pitches), 93.4 in May through July (175 pitches) and 92.5 in September (23 pitches). The change in velocity from 2022 to 2024 is not unusual for a pitcher who missed an entire season with arm issues. Therefore, Tate's 2025 sinker velocity could be more like the 2022 version and less like 2024.

Throughout his career, Tate has posted below-average strikeout rates. He gets outs by inducing soft contact and by inviting batters to beat his sinker into the ground, but he was better at that in 2022, when he ran a 59% groundball rate, than in 2024, when he was at a (still well above-average) 51%. Furthermore, his edge rate (the percentage of pitches crossing the plate within one baseball's width of the strike zone's edges) dropped from 44% in 2022 to 37% in 2024. Suppose Tate regains some sinker velocity and locates a higher percentage of pitches on the edge of the strike zone. That could help him regain his 2022 form. I would rate Tate second on my list, but not far from to Robertson's perch. Tate should be a little cheaper, and at 31, his age is his favour.

The Last Word

Swanson is a critical member of the Blue Jays bullpen. However, given the question surrounding his availability to pitch, the Blue Jays may need a replacement for Swanson. Tate, is a reasonable choice. Robertson profiles as a better candidate, but the difference between the two is not significant.
 

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[Brownie19]

Interesting.  Still feels like I have to squint pretty hard to see Tate as someone who's "just" behind Robertson.  Hope I'm wrong!

[Spanky99]

24 minutes ago, Brownie19 said:

Interesting.  Still feels like I have to squint pretty hard to see Tate as someone who's "just" behind Robertson.  Hope I'm wrong!

I WANT Robertson, regardless of Tate. The situation sucks with TV Dinner, he finished last season really well, was expecting good things, apparently not. Sounds like incoming bad news.

[Jim Scott]

How do you feel about giving one of the kids a shot?  Adam Macko has four 55-60 grade pitches.  His long-term role is hopefully as a starter, but I like the idea (given his injury history) of giving him a taste of the bigs in a bullpen role, possibly with some long relief and a spot start or two.  Arguably the best pitching coaches in the Jays organization are in mlb, so relief there might > starting in Buffalo.  And Jake Bloss has a Stuff+ of 112 on his sinker and 127 on his slider - likely more than good enough for a relief role.

[Orgfiller]

15 minutes ago, Jim Scott said:

How do you feel about giving one of the kids a shot?  Adam Macko has four 55-60 grade pitches.  His long-term role is hopefully as a starter, but I like the idea (given his injury history) of giving him a taste of the bigs in a bullpen role, possibly with some long relief and a spot start or two.  Arguably the best pitching coaches in the Jays organization are in mlb, so relief there might > starting in Buffalo.  And Jake Bloss has a Stuff+ of 112 on his sinker and 127 on his slider - likely more than good enough for a relief role.

Macko is sidelined for at least a couple of months as he recovers from a meniscus tear before official ST games began.

Bloss could certainly do well out of the BP, but I think his role for now is remaining stretched out in case some of the fringe options like Bowden Francis and Yariel Rodriguez struggle out of the gate. I think it's almost a near certainty that, barring an injury to himself, Bloss starts at least a handful of games this season. And if his home is in the rotation permanently, which the Jays certainly want as their key component of the Kikuchi deal, then he'll need to continue building up his innings.

There's no doubt for me that Bloss is the next man up in the depth chart after Francis and Rodriguez. With Scherzer and a lot of the rotation members being kind of old, I wouldn't be surprised to see stretches of a 6-man rotation under consideration.

[Bob Ritchie]

9 minutes ago, Jim Scott said:

How do you feel about giving one of the kids a shot?  Adam Macko has four 55-60 grade pitches.  His long-term role is hopefully as a starter, but I like the idea (given his injury history) of giving him a taste of the bigs in a bullpen role, possibly with some long relief and a spot start or two.  Arguably the best pitching coaches in the Jays organization are in mlb, so relief there might > starting in Buffalo.  And Jake Bloss has a Stuff+ of 112 on his sinker and 127 on his slider - likely more than good enough for a relief role.

On the assumption that Swanson will miss a considerable amount of time, I think Toronto should immediately replace him with someone experienced in his later-inning role. Neither Macko nor Bloss fits that criterion. Also, Macko is out after knee surgery and is expected to miss at least the season's first month. Tate, who is signed, can fill the Swanson slot.

I have no issue with Macko or Bloss vying for a regular bullpen role in non-late-inning/higher-leverage situations.

[Orgfiller]

Looks like the Cardinals were reading this post, as the signing of Phil Maton got announced about an hour following this article being released.

[Laika]

I feel like we cannot trust the Jays' RP depth at all given what happened last year. Not just at the MLB level but also with so many relief prospects who just s*** the bed in the minors. 

[Bob Ritchie]

4 minutes ago, Orgfiller said:

Looks like the Cardinals were reading this post, as the signing of Phil Maton got announced about an hour following this article being released.

My second favourite team are the Cardinals. Maybe I slipped an article draft to the Cardinals' Management before publication. :)

[John_Havok]

1 hour ago, Laika said:

I feel like we cannot trust the Jays' RP depth at all given what happened last year. Not just at the MLB level but also with so many relief prospects who just s*** the bed in the minors. 

 

1 hour ago, Laika said:

I feel like we cannot trust the Jays' RP depth at all given what happened last year. Not just at the MLB level but also with so many relief prospects who just s*** the bed in the minors. 

Really feels like the obvious solution is to trade one of the Buffalo boys for a reliever. It just makes sense. 

[Terminator]

I'd take a flyer on Kimbrel. He's been really inconsistent over the years but he has bounced back before and I think he can do it again. Probably not a dominant closer but he could at least be a decent setup man as he can still miss bats.

You always want to buy low on him anyway. Only dumb teams like the Orioles or Cubs ever buy high on him.  

[Spanky99]

All of a sudden, my adblocker doesn't work on here anymore... 😥

[jaysblue]

Hopefully Y-Rod emerges as a top reliever in the pen. I really think he can be a valuable arm who gives the Jays around 70-80 innings with 100+ K's and a 2 WAR season. 

Even his numbers/splits from Cuba show he has been more effective coming out of the pen, than in the rotation.