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Richard Lovelady Elects Free Agency

By Darragh McDonald | April 5, 2025 at 2:25pm CDT

TODAY: Lovelady has opted to reject the outright assignment and become a free agent, according to his MLB.com profile page.

APRIL 4: The Blue Jays have sent left-hander Richard Lovelady outright to Triple-A Buffalo, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. That indicates he cleared waivers after being designated for assignment a few days ago.

Lovelady, 29, has the right to elect free agency but it’s unclear if he will do so. Players with at least three years of major league service time, such as Lovelady, have that right. However, a player needs at least five years of service in order to both elect free agency and retain whatever money is still owed to him on his contract. Lovelady is just barely over the three-year line, meaning he’d have to walk away from his current contract if he heads to the open market.

It’s unclear what sort of financial decision he’s weighing. He signed a minor league deal with the Jays in the winter and was added to the 40-man prior to Opening Day. His major league salary on that deal hasn’t been publicly reported.

If he reports to Buffalo, he’ll give the Jays some non-roster depth. His brief time on their major league roster didn’t go well, as he allowed four earned runs in 1 2/3 innings. But his career track record is better than that. Overall, he has 101 innings in the majors with a 21.2% strikeout rate and 8.7% walk rate. Both of those numbers are close to league averages but his 50.2% ground ball rate is a few ticks better than par.

This has all resulted in a 5.26 earned run average but perhaps with some bad luck in there. His .301 batting average on balls in play and 65% strand rate are both on the unfortunate side of normal. That’s perhaps why his 4.32 FIP and 4.04 SIERA look far nicer than his ERA.

The Jays currently have Brendon Little and Mason Fluharty as the lefties in their bullpen. Josh Walker is on the 40-man but on optional assignment. As the season rolls along, injuries will pop up or the bullpen will get taxed during busy parts of the schedule. If Lovelady accepts his assignment and he performs well in Buffalo, the Jays could call him back up at some point. If he decides to head to free agency, he will likely be limited to minor league offers from other clubs.

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Toronto Blue Jays Transactions Richard Lovelady

NL Central Notes: Gorman, Reynolds, Cubs
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Mariners Designate Cody Bolton For Assignment
View Comments (34)
Post a Comment

34 Comments

  1. Steinbrenner2728

    2 months ago

    The Blue Jays surely cannot get enough…

    1
    Reply
    • Acoss1331

      2 months ago

      …of that love! I’m positive that’s what you were going to!

      1
      Reply
  2. SteveFinleyEnthusiast

    2 months ago

    Dick Lovelady is a hell of a nickname

    11
    Reply
    • Acoss1331

      2 months ago

      Careless Whisper starts playing when he’s around.

      4
      Reply
  3. partyatnapolis

    2 months ago

    good old dick lovelady

    7
    Reply
  4. TrillionaireTeamOperator

    2 months ago

    The dual answer to “what’s your name?” and “what is your orientation?”:

    Dick Lovelady.

    4
    Reply
  5. explodet

    2 months ago

    Sure was worth losing Yarbrough for an ERA over 20.

    1
    Reply
    • Get Off My Mound

      2 months ago

      Yarbrough quite literally has the same exact ERA as Lovelady as of this comment.

      6
      Reply
    • Beernbaseballguy

      2 months ago

      Whenever anyone of the Yankees relievers come back from the IL I am sure Yarborough will be cut loose, but by then will you even want him back? As a Yankees fan I will take any good inning we get from him, but I expect his performance against the Dbacks is more in line with what he can offer instead of the 3 outs he got against the Brewers.

      1
      Reply
  6. harrisstan

    2 months ago

    They should trade vlad right now. I can’t think of a more overrated player than him. This dude will be 300 pounds by age 30. Plus, he won’t sign in Toronto. No one’s top 15 choice is Toronto

    4
    Reply
    • Jabronathon

      2 months ago

      I agree. If i had to choose between extending Bichette or Vlad Jr, I’d choose Bo for sure. Let somebody else overpay for Husky Harris

      Reply
      • its_happening

        2 months ago

        Up until April 2024 Jays fans wanted Bo extended over Vlad.

        Reply
    • SweetLou

      2 months ago

      Youre such a dud. Get off trumps d ong

      1
      Reply
  7. yeah, sure!

    2 months ago

    *sighs* *opens comments*

    1
    Reply
  8. SomTeaver

    2 months ago

    Making room for Mendick on the roster, I presume?!

    3
    Reply
    • Gwynning

      2 months ago

      If they married and had a boy he’d be Dick Mendick-Lovelady Jr.

      2
      Reply
  9. chandlerbing

    2 months ago

    Once his wife finds out he got demoted
    He wont get to make love to his lady tonite

    Reply
  10. Old York

    2 months ago

    This should have happened during Spring Training.

    1
    Reply
  11. websoulsurfer

    2 months ago

    He is making major league minimum.

    1
    Reply
  12. bestone

    2 months ago

    Seems the opposition team’s staff were getting tired of attending to bruises…

    Reply
  13. high_upside

    2 months ago

    This is clearly not a guy the jays really liked since they cut him after one bad outing . It’s hard to understand why he made the team at all.

    2
    Reply
  14. Baseballisthebest

    2 months ago

    This was an obvious move for him. He was on a major league minimum deal so he really can’t do much worse as long as another team picks him up.

    1
    Reply
  15. beknighted

    2 months ago

    Hide your GMs: Dick Lovelady is a free agent and is on the hunt.

    2
    Reply
  16. bestone

    2 months ago

    He was the club leader in BPI….(bruises per inning)

    Reply
  17. Miken31

    2 months ago

    I have my own announcement… I’ve changed my last name to Lovelady.

    Reply
  18. Old York

    2 months ago

    He is betting that fungibility plus scarcity gives him higher future expected value as a free agent than sitting idle as stashable depth. Good luck…

    Reply
    • el_chapo_

      2 months ago

      Stop it with the ai filters no one talks like that literally no one!!!! (Besides maybe Ben Shapiro)

      Reply
      • Old York

        2 months ago

        @el_chapo_

        What ai filter?

        Reply
        • el_chapo_

          2 months ago

          Esteemed Poster,

          While I make it a cardinal rule never to cast aspersions on the intellectual endowments of my fellow forum denizens, your recent protestations regarding the absence of artificial augmentation in your prose do compel one to pause and engage in a moment of reflective incredulity. The syntactic architecture of your posts—replete with sesquipedalian flourishes, labyrinthine clauses, and a conspicuous predilection for lexical rarities—evokes less the casual musings of a baseball enthusiast and more the stylized output of a language model operating at full tilt.

          Now, it may very well be that you are, unbeknownst to us all, a cloistered professor of comparative literature moonlighting as a connoisseur of sabermetrics. Yet one cannot help but notice that your sudden rhetorical efflorescence coincides rather suspiciously with the proliferation of generative AI tools capable of precisely such loquacious eloquence. Coincidence? Perhaps. But Occam’s razor bids us consider the simpler hypothesis.

          In any event, whether your verbosity is the fruit of your own cerebral labors or the algorithmic finesse of an artificial interlocutor, I do commend your stylistic panache. Just know that some of us read between the lines—both literal and computational.

          Warmest regards,
          A humble devotee of both baseball and the English tongue

          This is what I mean….

          Reply
        • Old York

          2 months ago

          @el_chapo_

          So, what you’re telling me is that you don’t like to read my posts. Not sure how that suggests I’m using an ai filter, though. Maybe go back to school and learn how to use the English vocabulary. Or you can just mute me and you don’t have to read my opinion.

          Reply
        • el_chapo_

          2 months ago

          See this post was written regularly. Continue to post like an normal human being and everyone is happy to read your thoughts. You happen to have some good baseball knowledge and understanding of the game. Its just annoying when u ask an ai model to make a post for you. That’s all.

          Reply
        • Old York

          2 months ago

          @el_chapo_

          All my posts are written regularly. Never have I used ai in composing my posts on here. Why are you making these false allegations? The reason I changed from being trollish is that a good friend told me I should be using my knowledge to post logical discussion points instead of silly one-liners and jabs.

          1
          Reply
        • el_chapo_

          2 months ago

          It’s fine, just post like a normal human being, there’s high vocabulary and then there’s obscure words and phrases that no one ever uses in normal conversation, let alone dopey sports discussions.so when there a sudden shift in writing style from short concise sentences to verbose loquacious sentences there is reason for suspicion . I’m not alone in my accusation I’ve seen other posters here as well have the same thought. So it’s of no use to argue if you’re using ai or not. All I’m requesting is that when you engage in conversation here just post like reg dude.

          Reply
        • Old York

          2 months ago

          @el_chapo_

          I didn’t know there were such rules to posting on an internet forum. Could you direct me to the specific rules about posting like “reg dude”?

          Reply

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