Owen Hill

The Jays are rolling over the Padres as the offence explodes for 14 runs and Kevin Gausman looks like vintage Kevin Gausman. Daulton Varsho and Nathan Lukes homered as the Jays combined for 14 hits and three walks against Padres pitching. View full video

Despite a few blips on the radar and injuries to some key guys, the Blue Jays' bullpen has been a bright spot for the team early in the season. Jays relievers have paired their league-best K% of 28.4% with a 9.0% BB% to get the best K-BB% in baseball (entering games on Wednesday). Despite flashes of dominance, Toronto’s is just the ninth best bullpen in baseball according to fWAR (1.5), mainly because of the pure number of home runs they’ve given up as a group. They’re tied with the Athletics and Rays for the ninth most homers allowed in baseball, which has led to a slightly inflated 3.80 ERA, putting them in the middle of the pack at 14th in baseball. All things considered, a bullpen with elite strikeout numbers but league-average results is something most Jays fans would have signed up for in a heartbeat after the absolute tire-fire we were subjected to watching in 2024. The back end of the bullpen was bolstered this offseason with the addition of Jeff Hoffman and the return of Yimi García, while returning guys like Chad Green and Yariel Rodríguez have gotten big outs in high-leverage spots as well, especially when the former two have been unavailable. The two lefties, Brendon Little and Mason Fluharty, have been a revelation, as both have worked their way into John Schneider’s circle of trust. They have pitched high-intensity innings, getting both left-handed and right-handed hitters out. The final two bullpen spots have been a bit of a revolving door as the rotation has needed help and guys have struggled, but Braydon Fisher and José Ureña have successfully filled those spots in recent days. With that being said, let’s get into my personal Blue Jays bullpen trust hierarchy! Low Leverage Only, Please! As much as we want to avoid seeing these guys in the game whenever possible, their ability to eat multiple innings in blowouts, either wins or losses, and pitch early in games on bullpen days is vital to every major league team. In the Blue Jays' case, in which the starting rotation has faced some injury issues, forcing the front office to reach into their depth options, these guys have become even more important, as they can open games before a guy like Eric Lauer pitches bulk innings. We probably won’t see the guys in this tier closing games any time soon, but it doesn’t mean they’re not important! José Ureña José Ureña is a recent addition to this Blue Jays bullpen, as he signed as a free agent earlier this month after he was DFA'd by the New York Mets. We haven’t seen a whole lot of Ureña in his brief time as a Blue Jay, and digging into his stats from this year, we can see why. In 7 1/3 innings across three appearances as a Blue Jay, Ureña has given up more home runs (three) than batters he’s struck out (two). The standard small sample size caveat applies here, but when we dig into his peripherals, we can see an expected ERA over 13, an expected batting average close to .400, and the fact that he’s at the bottom of the barrel when it comes not only to missing bats, but missing barrels. It’s not hard to see why Ureña’s made just three appearances in nearly three weeks on the Blue Jays roster, and I’d expect his roster spot to be the first available when one of Erik Swanson, Ryan Burr, or Nick Sandlin is healthy enough to rejoin the big league team. Braydon Fisher Fisher is another new face to the Blue Jays bullpen, called up from Triple A on May 7 and making his major league debut just a few days later. Another small sample size caveat is required here, but in four appearances, Fisher has looked effective coming out of the bullpen. Unlike Ureña, there’s a little bit to dream on when it comes to Fisher’s stuff. He relies heavily on his breaking balls, a hard slider in the upper 80s and a slower curveball in the low 80s, but so far his approach has been effective. Fisher’s done a good job of getting swings outside of the zone and has yet to walk a hitter in five innings while striking out six. He’s only thrown his mid-90s four-seamer 12 percent of the time, so I have some concerns that word will get out on what Fisher is trying to do to hitters soon, but so far, it’s hard not to be happy with what we’ve seen from him. He’s got a lot of work to do to build up enough trust to move into the next tier of bullpen arm, but he’s on the right track early in his career. Chad Green This one might be a surprise for a lot of readers! Chad Green has been effective this season, pitching to a 3.48 ERA and giving up just 17 hits (.227 BA). Yet, gone are the days of Green being one of the most feared relievers in the New York Yankees' bullpen. At 33 years old and with a couple of major arm injuries behind him, Green has lost a tick on his high-spin four-seam fastball, which has also hurt his already mediocre slider. Not only does Green not miss bats like he used to, but he is currently giving up hard contact and barrels at a first percentile rate. He’s managed to survive so far this year without giving up too much catastrophic damage, but he’s already given up seven homers in just 20 1/3 innings pitched, the most among any reliever in baseball. To be frank, it’s really hard to use a reliever that’s liable to give up a homer at any time in close games! His expected ERA sits at 5.73, and while flyball pitchers with his profile tend to outperform their expected stats, I have a hard time trusting Green will be able to outrun them if he continues to rack up high-leverage innings. Trusted in Close Games, but Not Against the Top of the Order This category is for the guys I trust to get big outs late in games but feel a lot more comfortable watching against the bottom of the lineup or with more than a one-run cushion. Yariel Rodríguez The lone name in this category is Yariel Rodríguez, and based on how he’s been used recently, I think John Schneider agrees with my evaluation. The Blue Jays pushed Rodríguez to be a starter in his first season as a big leaguer, but those days look to be done based on how effective he’s looked as a reliever so far in 2025. Instead of having to leave some gas in the tank and maintain his composure for five or six innings, Rodríguez is now freed up to come out of the 'pen throwing max effort four-seamers and rip off hard sliders for an inning or two, and he looks really comfortable doing it. After a few blips early in the season, eight of Rodríguez’s last nine appearances have been scoreless, with five of them being more than one inning of work. On Tuesday night, in a game the Blue Jays were winning 3-0, Schneider opted to use Rodríguez in the eighth inning against the nine through two hitters in the Padres lineup, rather than sending out Yimi García to set up for Jeff Hoffman as we’ve seen so often in 2025. Rodríguez rewarded Schneider with a 1-2-3 inning, including groundouts from Fernando Tatis Jr. and Luis Arráez. Am I still a little bit skeptical of Yariel Rodríguez? Absolutely. But based on what he’s done lately, I think trying him out in some higher-leverage situations is absolutely warranted, especially considering the benefits García and Hoffman will see from not being forced to pitch in every close game. The Lefties I’m sure I could have fit the lefties into one of my other three categories, but considering how strategically the Jays deploy their left-handed relievers, and how effective the southpaws have been at getting the job done so far, I figured they deserved their own group. Mason Fluharty Mason Fluharty is another Blue Jays reliever who made his major league debut this year, and in 19 appearances, his success has been one of the best developments for this team early in the year. He doesn’t light up the radar gun, with his cutter averaging just under 90 mph and sweeper sitting in the low 80s, but his nearly sidearm delivery and impressive movement profiles on both pitches have helped him not only to induce weak contact but miss a lot of bats entirely. Fluharty has a very good 31.9% whiff rate and an elite 29.5% hard-hit rate. We expected Fluharty to be tough on lefties, but the true revelation has been what he’s done to righties. They’re hitting just .091 off of him, with just three hits in 37 trips to the plate. Fluharty has been more than reliable in middle relief, against both righties and lefties, and I’d love to see him continue to get opportunities against tough left-handed hitters in big spots. Brendon Little If I were perfectly honest, Fluharty probably belongs in the same category as Rodríguez, and Brendon Little would slide into the next category with the back-end guys. After getting some solid run in 2024 where he was good but not great, working a 3.74 ERA in 45 2/3 innings, Little was expected to play a big role in 2025’s new-look bullpen. Early on, he’s delivered. He has a 1.61 ERA in 22 1/3 innings pitched and has held opponents to a .173 batting average. He tunnels a curveball and sinker very effectively, with one breaking towards right-handed hitters and the other away, which has led to his ridiculous 52.7% whiff rate and 37% strikeout rate. Little is somewhat prone to hard contact, but it feels like it’s almost impossible for hitters to raise the ball against him, as he’s racked up a 61.7% groundball rate. Little has pitched some huge innings for the Blue Jays, and I feel more than comfortable every time I see him warming up in the bullpen, preparing to face the other team’s best left-handed hitters. Slam the Door This category is simple. Game on the line, a one-run lead to protect, who do I want coming in to pitch? Yimi García Ironically, the two guys I trust most with the game on the line have some inflated numbers early in the season. Yimi García has shown flashes of being as dominant as any pitcher in baseball, with a four-seamer that gets up to 99 mph and a pair of breaking balls that seem to never miss the bottom left quadrant of the strike zone. He is the guy I want coming in to clean up someone else’s mess late in the game, or against the other team’s best hitters because he’s so effective at inducing strikeouts. He has a 30.4% strikeout rate this year, coming almost entirely in high-leverage situations. The 3.32 ERA isn’t as impressive as that of many of the other elite relievers in the game, but García has thrown just 19 innings so far this season, and it’s really only a couple of tough outings that have brought that number up. Jeff Hoffman Finally, my most trusted reliever in the Blue Jays bullpen is the closer, Jeff Hoffman. Similar to García, Hoffman’s numbers are inflated due to a few poor outings in which he got hit around. His 5.48 ERA is quite cringeworthy, but his leash is still pretty long before I worry about the team demoting him from his role as the closer. Hoffman differs from many relievers because he offers a legitimate four-pitch mix, which can feel like an embarrassment of riches when he blows a high-90s four-seamer by a hitter and follows it up with an elite slider and hard splitter. The Jays have felt his slip-ups harder than anyone else’s this year, as they typically result in being the difference between a win and a loss, but there’s not a pitcher on the staff that offers Hoffman’s combination of pure stuff and command, and not a pitcher on the staff I want in the biggest spot of a game more than him. View full article

Anthony Santander hit a bomb, Chris Bassitt held his own, and the Blue Jays shut out the Padres 3-0. It's the kind of clean win against a good team the Jays need a lot more of in 2025. View full video

It’s hard to believe that we’re already talking this way, but we’re now more than a quarter of the way through the 2025 MLB season. After 46 games, the Blue Jays are 22-24, two games below .500. There have been a number of high points, including sweeps of the Nationals and first-place Mariners, but extended stretches of poor play, including losing eight of their last 10 to finish April, have made it feel like every time the Blue Jays take a step forward, a step backward is coming next. We can look at this in one of two ways. On the positive side, despite having yet to play their best baseball, the Jays have managed to keep their heads above water and find themselves half a game back of the Boston Red Sox for second place in the AL East. The Blue Jays are still in a position to have an extremely successful regular season and are firmly in the Wild Card race despite Anthony Santander's 64 wRC+ and -0.7 fWAR, some massive questions regarding starting rotation depth, injuries to key bullpen arms, and perhaps most notably, starting the season as the worst home run-hitting team in baseball. Instead of allowing all of these issues to compound and fester, the Jays have done well to pick up some important wins early in the season. On the other hand, we can look at this season so far and recognize that the Blue Jays are underperforming relative to their own expectations. According to Spotrac, they have the fifth highest payroll in MLB at over $246 million. All four teams above them in payroll are in first or second place in their division and well above .500, while the Blue Jays sit a couple of games under. The expectation among teams with payrolls well in excess of $200 million is not to hover around .500 and fight for Wild Card spots. It’s to coast to 90 wins and compete for a division title. The Jays have essentially been operating with a four-man rotation since Max Scherzer went down with thumb soreness three innings into his first start of the year, and while Easton Lucas, Eric Lauer, and bullpen days have looked like effective stopgaps at times, one more long-term injury could see the lack of starting pitching depth topple this season like a house of cards on a windy day. With Jake Bloss recently going down with season-ending UCL surgery, the Blue Jays are going to have to continue to rely on guys like Lucas and Lauer followed by a parade of bullpen arms to get through innings every fifth day, at least until Spencer Turnbull is built up or one of Alek Manoah or Scherzer is healthy enough to pitch in the big leagues. Position players like Alan Roden, Davis Schneider, and Will Wagner that made the Opening Day roster and were expected to play key roles in the offense have since been sent down to Triple A, and while names like Addison Barger, Nathan Lukes and Myles Straw have been able to step up and contribute in some big spots, the lineup is still clearly a bat or two short of being truly dangerous. The Blue Jays are far from being a juggernaut, but if we look around at their competition in the American League, they’re surrounded by a dozen other imperfect teams. There are playoff spots up for grabs, and teams that have obvious holes are going to fill them. The margins in the American League this year are as tight as ever, with 10 teams within five games of a Wild Card spot as of Monday. The difference in the American League playoff race is very likely going to boil down to which teams can do the best job of filling holes at the trade deadline to set themselves apart from the rest of the AL mediocrity. This is why it’s so important that the Blue Jays find a way to solidify themselves as an above .500 team, rather than float around the mark as they’ve done so far in 2025. They need to prove to the front office and ownership that they should continue to invest in the major league roster. The appetite to pour resources into the team, whether that be prospect capital, money, or both, will be a lot higher if the Jays can prove they’re an above .500 team than if they continue to sputter every time they string a few wins together. In Blue Jays land, the example always floats around that in 2015, the Jays were 50-51 after 101 games. Then, they got a boost from a historic trade deadline that saw David Price and Troy Tulowitzki join the team. Toronto finished the season on a 43-18 run and won a division title. Is a trade deadline like that possible for this year’s Blue Jays team? Sure, but with so many teams in the hunt for playoff spots, fewer will be out of the race by the deadline and willing to part with impact players in favour of prospects, something the Jays aren’t exactly overflowing with anyway. The other key difference between the 2015 team and this year’s Jays is that the 2015 club paired its 50-51 record with a +94 run differential. Already at a -28 run differential this season, the Jays are unlikely to put up a similar number and convince the front office that they’re a sleeping giant worthy of an all-in style trade deadline, meaning their record is going to have to speak for itself. If they are five games above .500 at the deadline, rather than a game or two below, that could end up making the difference as to whether or not the Jays pull the trigger on a trade that would add a big bat to the lineup or an ace to the rotation. Being above .500 by the end of July would all but guarantee an aggressive deadline for the Jays, whereas being below the mark would likely lead to a second straight year of a disappointing sell-off of pending free agents, or worse, standing pat and hoping the team can go on a run as is. A quarter of the way through the season, this team has proven itself to be good, but the Jays are going to need external help if they want to take the leap from good to great. The only way they’re going to be able to do that is if this group of players is able to bear down and prove to the front office that they’re worth parting ways with prospects for more big league talent. View full article

Let's rant about the Blue Jays' 5-4 Loss to the Tigers on Friday night. Bowden Francis is still allowing too many home runs and while Daulton Varsho and Bo Bichette contributed homers of their own, it wasn't enough to counteract the Jays' pitching staff. View full video

I break down and react to the Blue Jays' heartbreaking 11-9 loss to the Rays. The offense continued its roll, scoring nine runs, but closer Jeff Hoffman shows once again he is on the brink. View full video

The Jays capped off a three-game sweep of the Mariners in Seattle on Sunday with a nine-run explosion. The victory marked the first time Toronto has scored nine runs in a game this year and only the second time they’ve scored at least eight since the second day of the season (the other being their 8-5 win against the Angels on Thursday). As enjoyable as Sunday’s game was to watch, the impressive part of this weekend’s series was less the thumping on Sunday and more the consistent, relentless attack of Blue Jays hitters across multiple games, against many different pitchers. Coming into the series, the Mariners’ pitching staff was a perceived strong point and ranked 12th in baseball in ERA. However, it allowed a previously scuffling Blue Jays offence to put up crooked numbers in all three games, plating a total of 21 runs over the weekend. To get there, the Jays received production up and down the lineup, hitting .315 as a team with 11 extra base hits, four of them homers. As we typically see when an offence is rolling, the top of the lineup was very productive. Bo Bichette was 4-for-11 with three walks while mashing his second homer of the year to right-centre field on Saturday. George Springer continued his defiance of Father Time with three RBIs and four runs scored, including a mammoth homer on Sunday. Ernie Clement and Nathan Lukes also stood out as key contributors at the very productive bottom of the lineup, both reaching base six times in the series and both picking up multiple RBIs. Just about every Blue Jay with a bat chipped in one way or another, which speaks to just how dominant the lineup was this weekend. Yet, easily the most exciting development of the series was the breakout of Addison Barger. I wrote just last week that I thought Barger was showing signs of an offensive breakout, but I can’t take credit for believing that this was on the horizon. Barger put 11 balls in play against the Mariners, eight of which were hard-hit balls, qualified by having exit velocities of 95 mph or higher. Of Barger’s eight hard-hit balls, five of them came off the bat over 110 mph, including a 116.5-mph line drive double – the hardest-hit ball of his MLB career. Oh, and most importantly, all of those eviscerated baseballs turned into six hits, including three doubles and his first homer of 2025. As you can see below, Barger now finds himself nestled between Oneil Cruz and Aaron Judge on the average exit velocity leaderboard across baseball (as of Monday), albeit in a much smaller sample than those around him: It doesn’t take much analysis to tell you that that is one hell of a development. If Barger has truly unlocked something and can continue to produce elite exit velocities while keeping his strikeout rate low, he raises the offensive ceiling of this team in a big way. There’s not a whole lot a defence can do against baseballs that leave vapour trails. Barger’s production has clearly not gone unnoticed by manager John Schneider and the Jays, as he found himself hitting in the three spot between Vlad and Springer on Saturday and Sunday in the absence of Anthony Santander, who missed most of the weekend with lingering shoulder soreness from a crash into the stands on Friday night. I’m morally obligated to put the small sample size caveat on Barger here, but there is a whole lot to dream on going forward now that we’ve seen a little proof of concept that he is capable of producing at the top of the lineup at the big league level. Looking more broadly at the lineup and the season as a whole, it’s important to note that this weekend represented a run scoring outburst, not necessarily a power outburst. Even with a gaudy average of seven runs per game, the Jays had an ISO of just .171, which would currently be sixth in baseball if it held up over the full season. That’s a very encouraging number, but it tells us that the Jays still did the majority of their damage by stringing hits together, which may raise a few eyebrows when it comes to the sustainability of their newfound run-scoring prowess. Long story short, we’re going to need a larger sample to see if the process has truly changed in a way that would mark this weekend as a turning point for the Blue Jays’ offence. With this weekend in the rearview mirror, the Blue Jays now rank 14th in baseball with a 99 team wRC+ and 27th in both ISO (.119) and home runs (30). There is a lot of work to be done to prove that the most recent three games are more representative of what this lineup will be than the 37 games previous, but if they are, it’ll be easy to look back at the end of this season and note this weekend as a major turning point for the offence. Stats and rankings in article taken prior to games on Monday, May 12. View full article

Digging into Jeff Hoffman's recent struggles and dispelling the notion that he may be tipping his pitches. View full video

Aside from a (glorious) three-game blip at the end of last week, the Blue Jays' offense has been starving for power since the outset of the season. Even with the offseason acquisition of Anthony Santander, the consensus around the roster coming into the year was that the offense was going to be a weak spot, specifically when it came to hitting home runs. Now, even those who were lowest on the lineup didn’t expect the Jays to be dead last in baseball with just 25 homers more than a month into the season. In all fairness, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find experts who don't believe the Jays will pick up the pace and find themselves more in line with the major league average by the end of the season. Still, it’s clear that the formula of relying on Santander and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to hit all of the team’s homers while everyone else tries to string hits together is not working. There’s been no shortage of opportunities for other players to prove to John Schneider that they can be the missing piece that brings the threat of extra-base hits with them to the plate, but to this point, nobody has taken the opportunity and run with it. Ernie Clement's .480 OPS across 92 plate appearances would likely make him unplayable if it weren't for his typically slick fielding at multiple infield positions. Meanwhile, after strong springs to get them on the Opening Day roster, Davis Schneider, and more recently, Will Wagner and Alan Roden, played their way down to Triple-A Buffalo, making way for Addison Barger to get some recent run as pretty close to an everyday player. In 39 plate appearances, Barger has yet to separate himself from his flailing peers in any meaningful way as far as results go, picking up just five hits. But if we dig a little deeper, there are some encouraging signs to indicate that some offensive production could be just around the corner. It’s been known for a few seasons now just how tooled up Barger is. He has the second-highest maximum exit velocity of any Blue Jay this year at 112.5 mph, and he swings the bat as fast as anyone. He is also an above-average runner and has one of the more impressive arms in baseball from both the outfield and the infield. Recognizing all of his loud tools, towards the end of 2024, the Blue Jays gave Barger a fairly extended opportunity to cement himself as a key piece of this team moving forward. Barger squandered it, as he finished the season hitting below .200 with a 26.7% strikeout rate. His poor big league performance in 2024 was a big factor in his starting in Triple A this season, but in a small sample since his call-up, 2025 Barger looks to have made some important changes to his offensive approach. In 2024, Barger was far too jumpy at the plate. Eager to show off his bat, he chased a very poor 31.5% of the time, leading to an inflated strikeout rate and deflated walk rate. Worse, the frequency with which he swung outside of the zone had a serious impact on his quality of contact. Despite his ability to hit baseballs in excess of 110 mph, Barger had an average exit velocity well below major league average at just 88.3 mph, very likely related to the number of pitches he was making contact with that were not in the strike zone. Coming into 2025, addressing his chase rate was one of the most important things Barger needed to do to overcome the “showcase player” tag given to those with loud tools that can’t seem to find their way into games. And so far, in a very small sample, he’s done exactly that. Between last year and this year, Barger has gone from well below to well above league average in chase percentage, currently sitting at just 20.8%. Addressing this seems to have led to better peripherals in a number of other areas, including his strikeout percentage, which is now below 18%, and his average exit velocity, which has jumped nearly five points to 93 mph (that’s just 0.1 mph less than Vladdy!). Because of how hard Barger is able to hit the baseball, he’s a threat to do damage whenever he’s at the plate, but despite taking steps in the right direction, he’s yet to do the most important thing: turn his tools into results. He has an OPS in the .400s and has yet to leave the yard. So far, he simply has not played well enough to help his team win games, and until he does, it doesn’t matter how promising his peripheral numbers might appear. As a part of the Blue Jays lineup, Barger possesses the key that could unlock some of the damage this team has been so desperately searching for. Yet, every day he plays without putting it all together, his leash in the big leagues gets a little bit shorter as the Blue Jays continue to hunt for power. Stats in article updated prior to games on May 7. View full article

Ross Atkins must have stayed in on Friday night, because he’s had a productive Saturday morning, reportedly agreeing to contracts with pitchers Spencer Turnbull and José Ureña. After mentioning to the media before Friday’s series opener against the Cleveland Guardians that the Jays were looking at free agent pitching that could impact the big league roster, Atkins made good on his promise by adding a pair of free agent swingmen in quick succession. Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet first reported that Spencer Turnbull has agreed to a major league deal with the Jays. Turnbull is a 32-year-old right-hander with major league experience both starting games and coming out of the bullpen. He spent 2024 with the Philadelphia Phillies and put together what is probably the best statistical season of his career to date, working a 2.65 ERA across seven starts and 10 relief appearances, before ending his season two months early with a lat strain. Turnbull will go at hitters with a steady diet of 92 mph four-seam fastballs, but his sweeper was the featured pitch in 2024, as opponents hit just .145 with a 30.8 whiff percentage against it. Turnbull also throws a sinker, curveball, change-up, and slider, all of which he can land for strikes. The Jays’ lack of starting pitching depth has been clear early in the season, and signing Turnbull is a solution to that problem. However, without a team until this point, Turnbull completely missed out on spring training and the first month of the season, so he will need to take some time to build up for major league games. It’s not yet clear if there’s a timeline for his first appearance as a Blue Jay, but I would expect the Jays to be relatively patient with Turnbull as he prepares to join the starting rotation or pitch bulk innings out of the bullpen. Before Turnbull is ready to go, we can expect José Ureńa, who also reportedly agreed to a major league contract with the Blue Jays on Saturday morning, to get some burn in a bulk role. Now 33 years old, Ureña has been around since 2015, working in a swingman role for most of that time. He began 2025 in Triple-A for the New York Mets, and was called up at the end of April, although just for just a single appearance, in which he gave up five runs across three innings, before getting DFA’d earlier this week. I wouldn’t put much stock into that outing, although Ureña’s arsenal doesn’t offer as much upside as Turnbull’s. He did see success for the Texas Rangers in 2024, keeping hitters off balance by mixing a slider and change-up with his mid-90’s sinker. He doesn’t rack up a whole lot of swings and misses, striking out just 15.1% of the hitters he faced in 2024, but when he’s successful he’s able to use the sinker to induce a ton of ground balls. Similar to Turnbull, Ureña offers some versatility with the ability to both start or throw multiple innings out of the bullpen. For the Rangers in 2024, he threw 64 2/3 innings in 32 appearances out of the bullpen to the tune of a 2.92 ERA, although he did get hit around in his nine starts, allowing opponents to hit .272 on route to a 5.08 ERA. With both reported deals being of the major league variety, subsequent roster moves will need to be made upon making these deals official. We can point the finger at guys like Eric Lauer, Josh Walker, and Dillon Tate on the 26-man roster as potential names that could lose their spot in favour of Turnbull or Ureña. However, both of them will need 40-man spots, meaning it won’t be enough to simply option two of the guys mentioned above. A final name that appears to remain in the mix to help the Blue Jays’ pitching depth is Casey Lawrence, whom the Jays claimed from the Seattle Mariners last week, although Lawrence was DFA’d and elected free agency before making an appearance for the Jays. The Jays would be hard-pressed to find him a 40-man spot, especially with Ureña and Turnbull now in the mix for a 26-man spot, but Lawrence would be another option with the ability to throw bulk innings. Regardless of the necessary roster casualties to get Turnbull and Ureña on the roster, these moves are an encouraging sign that Ross Atkins and the Blue Jays’ front office recognized a hole in the roster, and are showing a sense of urgency to fill it. View full article

We break down the Vladimir Guerrero Jr plate appearance that resulted in him taking Boston starting pitcher Garrett Crochet deep. View full video

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The Blue Jays have been desperate for power. Can Daulton Varsho's return be a turning point for the offense? Daulton Varsho made his much-anticipated season debut on Tuesday, coming off of the injured list with a fully rehabbed right shoulder. The return of their everyday centre fielder represents a refreshing jolt to a Blue Jays lineup that has struggled mightily to produce runs since the very start of the season. The offensive woes have been well documented, so I’ll refer you to Leo Morgenstern’s piece from this weekend for a deep dive into what exactly has gone wrong, but just for a quick recap: The Jays would likely benefit from sacrificing some contact for some power. Having Varsho’s bat in the lineup every day will be a shift towards this goal in and of itself, simply because his offensive profile comes with high bat speed (78th percentile in 2024) and a lot of swing and miss (whiffed 27% of the time in 2024). Most importantly, Varsho is a threat to leave the yard, making him a much-needed reinforcement for a lineup that ranks 29th in homers, with just 16 through their first 29 games. It’s asking a lot of Varsho, who has yet to put up a season with a league average OPS as a Blue Jay, to come off the IL, slot into the middle of the order and completely change the fortunes of one of the worst offenses in baseball. Further, if we take a (very quick) glance at his numbers across seven rehab games in the minor leagues, we can see that Varsho was just 3-for-25 without an extra base hit between Dunedin and Buffalo. It would be malpractice to look at minor league rehab numbers from seven games and make any sort of proclamation, but it is important to note that Varsho wasn't exactly setting the world on fire at the plate, and even if he were, he’s not going to single-handedly fix the offense. Interestingly enough, between the hot starts of George Springer and Myles Straw, Blue Jays centre fielders actually ranked fourth in baseball in wRC+ before Varsho’s season debut on Tuesday. It’s one of the few positions from which the Blue Jays have received above-average offensive production. With Varsho likely to own centre field for the rest of the season, it sparks up an interesting discussion about who gets displaced and what the best way is to deploy this roster. The corresponding move to Varsho’s addition to the 26-man roster was slightly surprising, as the Jays opted to send infielder Will Wagner to Triple A and carry six outfielders, rather than sending one of Nathan Lukes, Alan Roden or Addison Barger to Buffalo. This tells us that Barger is likely going to get some run at third base, a position he’s spent a lot of time at in the minor leagues. Barger could play the strong side of a third base platoon with Ernie Clement, another Blue Jay who’s limped out of the blocks this season. With Barger potentially getting the bulk of his playing time at third, and Varsho’s name set in stone as the centre fielder, we’re left with Lukes, Straw, Springer, and Anthony Santander to split time between the corners. Springer and Santander both need to be in the lineup every day, so we’ll see the two of them split time between right field and DH. However, on Sunday, John Schnieder did mention wanting to get Santander more time in the outfield, indicating we could sometimes see a lineup with Springer in left and Santander in right. This will be a little bit easier to digest now that Varsho's elite glove is back in centre field, but it makes things complicated for Straw and Lukes, who will lose playing time on days that both Springer and Santander start in the outfield. Although it might not be as sexy as talking about the home runs he’s going to hit, it’s important to mention what Varsho’s return is going to do for the Blue Jays’ defence. Prior to his return, they were completely neutral as a team according to outs above average (OAA), while they ranked eighth in baseball with 10 defensive runs saved (DRS) after leading the league in DRS each of the last two seasons. The bulk of Varsho’s value comes on the defensive side of the ball, and his return will reinforce one of the roster’s strongest attributes, which should make it easier for the pitching staff to keep the offense within striking distance in any given game. It didn't take long for him to flash the leather in his first game back: All things considered, the return of Daulton Varsho couldn’t be more timely, as the Blue Jays shore up their centre field defense and continue their search for home runs. View full article