Who Is Cody Ponce, and How Can He Help the Blue Jays?

[Owen Hill]

On the same day the Jays announced the signing of Dylan Cease to a $210 million deal, GM Ross Atkins was back at it, making another splash in the free agent pitching market, this time signing right-hander Cody Ponce to a three-year, $30 million deal.

At first glance, guaranteeing that type of term and money to a 31-year-old that hasn’t pitched in the big leagues since 2021 is a bit of an eyebrow raiser, but when you take a peek at what Ponce was doing to hitters in the KBO last season, it starts to make some sense.

Over 180.2 innings pitched for the Hanwha Eagles, Ponce absolutely dominated. He worked a 1.89 ERA with a strikeout rate of 36.2%. He only gave up 0.5 HR/9 and allowed a hard-hit rate of just 16.7%

Those numbers translated to a 17-1 record and led him to win the KBO’s MVP award.

Ponce left Major League Baseball for Japan’s NPB after struggling through a pair of seasons in Pittsburgh in 2020 and 2021, but he didn’t immediately flourish overseas.

He worked his way through two solid, but not exactly eye-catching, seasons for the NPB’s Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters with an ERA in the mid-3.00s before signing with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles for the 2024 season.

The 2024 season had to have been pretty disappointing for Ponce. Despite his strikeout and walk rates, hard-hit rate, and FIP remaining similar to those from his two previous NPB seasons, his ERA ballooned to 6.72 over 15 appearances and 12 starts.

That’s part of what makes his dominant MVP campaign, at 30 years old, in a new league, so surprising. Ponce must have discovered something in his transition between NPB and the KBO.

I have to credit Lance Brozdowski and his article dedicated to Ponce for just about all of the data I can provide in this Ponce breakdown, and if you’re interested in in-depth pitching breakdowns, his Substack is a must-read.

Now, back to Ponce.

The first thing to look at is his fastball velocity. He averaged 95.5 mph on his four-seamer while maxing out at 98.5 in 2025, up over two miles per hour from the previous season. That jump in velo, paired with Ponce’s impressive extension (he’s 6-foot-6), has to make him a pretty uncomfortable at-bat, and immediately makes it more believable that he can be successful in MLB.

The other big change Ponce made was adding a change-up. That’s different from a splitter, but it is still the style of pitch we know the Jays have been enamoured with when targeting and developing pitchers.

The change-up averaged about 87.5 mph and produced silly whiff and zone whiff rates of 46% and 39%, respectively.

Just think about that for just one more second: 39% of the time that KBO hitters swung at Ponce’s change-up in the strike zone, they missed it.

Aside from the fastball/change-up combination, Ponce also throws a cutter and a bigger, slower curveball, as well as flashing a sinker.

The ridiculous whiff rates are obviously not going to translate directly against MLB hitters, but they don’t have to be quite that big for Ponce to remain effective, especially if he can keep the contact that he does give up on the softer side.

It’s still too early to say how the Jays plan to utilize Ponce. He’s been a starter his whole career, and I’d expect that’s what the Jays have in mind for him, but the starting rotation is starting to look pretty full.

As it lined up before the Ponce addition, the Jays could have run out a rotation of Cease, Kevin Gausman, Shane Bieber, Trey Yesavage, and José Berríos, with Eric Lauer in a swing-man role.

Throwing Ponce into the mix certainly looks like it causes a logjam in that fifth spot in the rotation.

Just for fun, here are FanGraphs's 2026 Steamer projections for Ponce, Berríos, and Lauer, the three guys in the mix for that fifth rotation spot:

Pitcher	2026 Projected Starts/IP	2026 Projected ERA	2026 Projected WAR
Cody Ponce	26/148	4.08	2.2
José Berríos	28/159	4.52	1.5
Eric Lauer	5/65 (38 relief appearances)	4.27	0.3

Interestingly enough, Ponce outperforms Berríos, if only marginally.

These things tend to work themselves out, and there’s never been a team that has had too much starting pitching. Even still, it looks like another move may be on the horizon.

Could the Jays try to eat some of the approximately $67 million left on the three years of Berríos’s contract, trade him away, and slide Ponce right into that fifth spot? 

Or do the Jays foresee Ponce playing a similar role to that which Lauer played in 2025? They could use him as a bullpen piece until they inevitably need an extended stretch of starts due to an injury to one of their other starters.

Regardless of the role the Jays end up carving out for Ponce in 2026, this move also shores up the team's rotation depth for 2027 and '28. Gausman and Bieber are both free agents after this season, and Berríos has an opt-out – although he’d need to drastically outperform those projections to even consider taking it.

Regardless, it’s so much fun to see the Jays moving so quickly and aggressively early in the offseason, addressing what was clearly their number one priority.

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