Dillon Tate and Bullpen Arms for the Blue Jays To Consider

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.