Article: Big Shoes To Fill: Can Yariel Rodríguez Step Up In Yimi García’s Absence?

Owen Hill · May 27, 2025

Yimi García, one of the most trusted relievers in the Blue Jays bullpen, was placed on the 15-day injured list on Saturday with an impingement in his right shoulder. There’s not a whole lot of information about his timeline to return, although the hope is that his absence won’t last long. Still, while he’s gone, his innings, which have come almost entirely in high-leverage spots, are going to need to go to someone else.

If you told a Jays fan at the start of spring training that García would hit the IL at some point, their natural reaction would likely be to expect guys like Erik Swanson and Nick Sandlin to take on a higher-leverage role. Yet, with the two of them already away from the team battling injuries of their own, the Blue Jays are going to need somebody else to step up in a big way.

My pick to be this guy, from the limited options available (the Jays hardly have an excess of bullpen arms that have shown they deserve to be thrown into the fire), is Yariel Rodríguez.

Rodríguez's perception in Blue Jay land has been something of a rollercoaster since he signed as an international free agent prior to the 2024 season. There was some serious excitement heading into his first big league campaign that he could stick as a starter. Although he survived 2024, working a not-quite-catastrophic 4.47 ERA in 21 starts, he had a hard time carrying his velocity deep into his outings and often found himself struggling to locate the strike zone – and getting knocked around when he did. His league-average strikeout percentage and below-average fastball velocity were indicative that he’d benefit from a shift to shorter appearances.

So, coming into 2025, with a lot of Rodríguez's shine from the 2023-24 offseason worn off, the Blue Jays very quietly declined to stretch him out as starting pitching depth. Instead, they’ve given him shorter assignments, no more than two innings, and requested that he, and I’m paraphrasing here, throw the s*** out of the ball.

Instead of trying to leave some gas in the tank for the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings, Rodríguez comes out of the ‘pen with the intent to attack hitters with his best stuff from the jump. Thanks to this, we’ve seen his average fastball velocity increase more than two miles per hour, now sitting at 96 and at times touching 98 mph. In turn, this has helped raise his whiff and strikeout rates from about league average to considerably above it.

The other adjustment Rodríguez made coming into the year was eliminating his curveball in favour of his much more effective slider. As a starting pitcher, it made sense for him to have two breaking balls in his arsenal, especially when facing a lineup for the second and third time in an outing. Now a reliever, he doesn’t need to worry about a hitter getting comfortable against his featured pitches and can always offer his best stuff.

In 2024, Rodríguez threw his slider 28% of the time and his curveball 10% of the time. Last year, his slider was a solid pitch, registering a 103 Stuff+ according to FanGraphs, whereas the curveball graded out with a poor Stuff+ of just 92 (league average is 100). This showed up in the results as well. Opponents hit the curveball to the tune of a .348 average, and it had a Statcast run value of -6 despite only being thrown 157 times. This meant that even though his slider was an effective pitch (+1 run value), Rodríguez finished 2024 in just the 11th percentile in breaking ball run value.

Now, Rodríguez has bumped up his slider usage to 36%, and by simply eliminating the curveball, he has gone from having one of the worst breaking ball run values in baseball to one of the best, sitting in the 86th percentile early in 2025.

Now that we’ve checked under the hood and everything looks encouraging, the most important development of Rodríguez's 2025 is how positive his results have been. Since giving up a run in two of his first four outings of the season, he has settled in very nicely, allowing opponents to hit just .154 against him while working a 1.74 ERA since April 9.

It’s pretty clear John Schneider and the Jays have recognized his success, because even before García went down, Rodríguez had been finding himself in more and more close games, especially when García or Jeff Hoffman were unavailable because they’d pitched the previous day.

García’s absence leaves a big hole in the Blue Jays bullpen, and the jury is still out on whether there’s a reliever in-house with the sauce to fill it. If there is, my money is on Yariel Rodríguez.

Stats updated prior to games on Monday, May 26.

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