The Blue Jays have signed left-hander Aaron Laffey to a split contract, MLBTR's Tim Dierkes has learned. The Royals non-tendered Laffey earlier this month.
Laffey, 26, turned down a pre-tender deal with the Royals in order to find an opportunity to pitch as a starter. Three teams told Laffey that he could compete for a spot in the rotation and ultimately the pitcher decided that the Blue Jays presented him with the best opportunity to do that.
Laffey made 47 appearances for the Yankees and Mariners in 2011, posting a 3.88 ERA with 5.1 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9. In 49 major league starts, Laffey owns a 4.35 ERA with 4.3 K/9 and 3.6 BB/9.
more bullpen help
Meh this does nothing for me. My avi gets me more excited.
Great signing here. If he has a good spring he could definetly be a good 5th starter. His walk to SO ratio is a disaster, but more competition will be good.
If he wins a starter job , we’re F%^&$#.
I think they misspelled Garza.
Garza’s a FA?
Go Jays!
“ultimately the pitcher decided that the Blue Jays presented him with the best opportunity to do that.”
I hope he realizes that there are about 2, 3 guys already fighting for the 5th spot. I’d rather see him in the pen anyway over the rotation.
I bet he makes the rotations. Last two years we’ve come out of spring with Dana Eveland and JoJo Reyes.
Soo… here’s to aaron laffey.
I understand why you would think that, but we have a lot more options this year. Last year Henderson Alvarez and McGowan were not even options and Morrow started the season hurt so Jo-Jo pretty much won the spot out of circumstance. We have much more options this year which is why I am confused Laffey would think that.
those guys were out of options whereas Laffey is not.
yea, to make the current rotation he has to overcome two of mcgowan, drabek and cecil who all have greater potential or better big league experience than him. he might beat out drabek, but i dont think he beats the other 2 unless mcgowan has a health setback. maybe thats what this signing is about?
he’s not even good enough against lefties to be a bullpen specialist.
Yeah, I applaud his optimism but he is nothing more than a depth acquisition in both the rotation and bullpen, wherever he would be needed.
Laffey signed a split contract, which allows the Jays to pay him a major league salary if he wins a job, but it also allows them to pay him a minor league contract if he doesn’t make the team in spring training. Having more depth at triple A is always a benefit, especially if they have major league experience.
As pointed out, he has to beat a lot of pitchers just to make the fifth starters slot and he will face stiff competition from Drabek, McGowan, Hutchison, McGuire, etc who want to prove they belong. Laffey is also bullpen insurance later in the season, if Oliver or Perez experience an injury.
The Jays starting rotation is an open book. Its Romero and….guys who had poor seasons, or have little experience. The guy likes his chances in Toronto for a reason. The team had Jojo pitching last year. Nuff said.
I went to a few of Morrow’s games last season and he, by no means, had a poor season. He had a couple of poor starts… but I’d take his upside over his downside.
oh he had his moments, but had 17 quality starts out of 30. The Year before is was 15 of 27 I think? There was a whole month (mid aug to mid sept) where it was disaster after disaster. He needs to be better.
Now there is a man with a firm grip on reality. He’ll start in Toronto all right, and end disappointed.
plus SP depth in minors if you want to move Carreno into the bullpen
So he’s this year’s Tomo Ohka/Dana Eveland/Jo-Jo Reyes? Fantastic.
Jays have enough people who “might make a good 5th starter”, they should be recruiting higher than that. I’m not a fantasist who thinks we should be signing top of the range free agents necessarily, but the only way to improve is to sign players better than those you already have. Laffey isn’t.
hahahah i forgot about tomo
Tomo Ohka is no Laffey matter…
split contract…shave your beard
I don’t know what a fantasist is, but, we need somebody who can play in AAA and make some appearances, a team needs more then just 5 guys who can start. And there’s plenty of talent for SP coming through the system that should be starting to arrive by the end of 2012. You’re over reacting to what amounts to basically a nothing move. A depth move.
Am i the only one here who has no idea what a split contract is? I would be very happy if someone gave me the one sentence summary!
Pays one rate if the player is in AAA and a different rate in MLB. So a guy on a split contract could be a paid, for example, a prorated salary of 300k if he is in AAA and 800k if he is on the MLB team.
Thanks guys – Makes sense – I learned something!
split minor and major league contract that pays different amount for each assignment. when he’s in the bigs, he gets paid more than he would on a straight minor league deal.
I don’t know what you all are complaining about. Just remember… at the end of the day, Toronto is not Seattle, so with that perspective… you should now be happy.
And oh ya…. he sucked when he was in Seattle. 😀
The royals non-tendered him, but he made appearances for the Yankees and M’s last season. What did I miss?…
Royals claimed him off waivers.
2 lefties in a day? Don’t they have enough?
More!!!
Jamie Moyer!
Ya now they have…………………3???
Is that enough now????
It’s a “Laffy” he picks the Jays. Blue Jays SP is thin but can he beat out Cecil, Mcgowan and Drabek?
It depends…Drabek is lost, Cecil is…well, Cecil and who knows if they can keep McGowans arm from shredding when he throws again.
drabek had one down year, but still has mlb starter quality stuff and mcgowan’s shoulder is probably more of a concern than his elbow.
24 year old pitcher with only 17 starts under his belt. yeah, drabek’s pretty much lost forever.
It’ll put a bit of a fire under the others fighting for the fifth spot; i like it.
It’ll be more like a cool soothing breeze
Laffey has decent end of the rotation numbers. Surprised he didn’t get more in this inflated market.
Also signed Brian Bocock.
That reminds me …
“B$%^& make me a sandwich!” *Yells at GF in the kitchen*
LOL! nice one!
Hey now, Williams picked Rios off of wavers… there was no trade.
Even you know that was lame.
Please don’t use WHIP.
Agree’d. It uses too many real stats. Like Hits…and walks…and Innings pitched…we all know those say nothing about a pitcher…
I’m only commenting here because your thumb pic told me so.
Nom nom nom.
This site is a sausage fest , figured id titty it up a notch!
Hits per nine innings is almost completely out of the pitcher’s control.
Lulz.
Yeah thats why Lincecum averages 7.37 H/9 over his career while Laffey has averaged 10.27.
Heres an idea. Look at the top pitchers in baseball and see what their H/9 is. Now look at the league average.
OF COURSE H/9 is effected by the pitcher. You think its a coincidence that one guy averaged three less hits per 9 innings over his career (in both cases well over 400 IP). Come on…
hits per nine is out of a pitchers control??
who else controls it ???
it can fluctuate, but most pitchers have very different averages based on ability
So he’s definitely starting then. If he does go for a pen job he’ll be in tough competition against Perez for LOOGY. My guess is he loses then pen job to Perez because Laffey apparently has options left so he’ll start out as the Ace in Las Vegas and first call up for spot starts.
My bad, I misspoke. The point is, once the batter makes contact, it’s out of the pitcher’s hands as to what happens with it. How do you think fly ball pitchers can do so well in Safeco Field? Team defense has more to do with how a pitcher does than you think.
Only 6 hours. Not bad. You people have more restraint than I expected.
I’ve never seen a logical consistency to that.
Think about it, we’ve seen examples of pitchers going to teams with tougher division rivals and their ERA goes up. Also, we see examples where pitchers go to more HR friendly ballparks, and the ERA goes up. But are there really examples of players going to inferior defenses and having that happen?
If the yankees sign a pitcher, do we talk about how lucky he is to have Jeter and Cano behind him? Nope, we talk about how playing in Yankee stadium against the Sox and Jays will make him toast.
Defense has LESS to do with pitchers performance than you think.