The Blue Jays announced today that right-hander Paxton Schultz has been recalled from Triple-A Buffalo. Left-hander Justin Bruihl was also selected to the roster. In corresponding moves, the club placed right-hander Bowden Francis on the 15-day injured list due to a right shoulder impingement and designated right-hander Erik Swanson for assignment.
Swanson, 31, was acquired from the Mariners ahead of the 2023 season as part of the trade that sent outfielder Teoscar Hernández to Seattle. Swanson’s first season with the Jays was excellent, as he posted a 2.97 earned run average over 66 2/3 innings. He struck out 28.6% of opponents while only giving out walks at an 8% clip. He became a key cog in the bullpen, earning four saves and 29 holds.
That version of Swanson hasn’t appeared much since then. His 2024 got out to a scary start when his son Toby was hospitalized after being struck by a car during spring training. Fortunately, Toby was released from hospital within two weeks, but Swanson also faced some more traditional baseball challenges at that time. He was dealing with some forearm inflammation and started the season on the 15-day IL. After being reinstated, he struggled enough to get optioned to the minors, having a 9.22 ERA through the end of May.
He did finish 2024 on a high note, as he was recalled at the end of June and posted a 2.81 ERA the rest of the way, but his 2025 has started similarly to last year. He started the season on the IL due to a right median nerve entrapment and has struggled since being reinstated. He has tossed 5 1/3 innings with nine earned runs allowed, surrendering five walks while striking out just three opponents.
That’s obviously a tiny sample size but the Jays presumably don’t have faith in Swanson getting back on track. His fastball velocity is down by a mile per hour relative to last year, 92.9 compared to 93.9 in 2024. His splitter has fallen even farther, from 84.9 mph to 83.3 mph. On his rehab assignment before being activated, he allowed six earned runs in 5 1/3 innings.
Swanson now has over five years of major league service time, meaning he can’t be optioned to the minors without his consent, so the Jays can’t give him a break in Triple-A like they did last year. Instead, they’ve bumped him off the 40-man completely. Surpassing five years of service also means he can reject an outright assignment while retaining this year’s salary commitments. He and the Jays avoided arbitration in the offseason by agreeing to a $3MM salary.
DFA limbo can last as long as a week but the waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Jays can take up to five days to explore trade interest. Based on his salary and his recent performance, there’s not likely to be a ton of interest unless they want to eat some of the money to facilitate a deal. If Swanson clears waivers and elects free agency, the Jays will remain on the hook for that money. Any other club would then be able to sign him and pay him just the prorated portion of the league minimum salary, with that amount subtracted from what the Jays are paying.
The loss of Francis to the IL is a notable development for the Jays, even though there’s little information about his expected injury absence, as it opens a hole in their rotation. Francis hasn’t been good this year, with a 6.05 ERA in 14 starts, but he has continued to get starts largely due to a lack of better options.
The Jays have a solid veteran trio in Jose Berrios, Kevin Gausman and Chris Bassitt but those three have been joined by a struggling Francis and a patchwork of swingmen. Guys like Eric Lauer, Easton Lucas, Jose Urena, Spencer Turnbull and Schultz have been making spot starts or multi-inning relief appearances.
That’s due to Max Scherzer landing on the injured list after just one start due to right thumb inflammation. He tossed 4 1/3 innings on a rehab start on Friday and could perhaps rejoin the big league club after one more.
Starting tonight, the Jays play six straight and have one off-day before a 16-game stretch, making for 22 games in 23 days. Heading into that with only three true starters is obviously less than ideal. Perhaps Scherzer and/or Francis could return to the roster before that’s all done, but the Jays will be cobbling things together for now. Lauer and Turnbull are still on the roster and Schultz has now joined them, giving them three potential bulk guys. Lucas and Adam Macko are on the 40-man roster and on optional assignment, so they may end up getting recalled in the coming weeks as well. Urena recently elected free agency after a stint with the Dodgers, so perhaps the Jays will give him another call.
Despite all the rotation challenges, the Jays currently hold a Wild Card spot and figure to be in the market for starting pitching ahead of the deadline. That was true before Francis landed on the IL but it presumably only exacerbates the need.
Also providing the bullpen with a fresh arm is Bruihl. The 27-year-old signed a minor league deal with the Jays in March and has been pitching in Triple-A since then, with a 3.81 ERA in 28 1/3 innings. His 10% walk rate is a bit high but he has struck out 30% of opponents while getting grounders on 61.5% of balls in play.
He also has some major league experience under his belt, though without that kind of strikeout stuff. He logged 76 innings between the Dodgers, Rockies and Pirates over the past few years with a 4.62 ERA and a 15.9% strikeout rate. He still has an option remaining so the Jays could send him back to Buffalo fairly easily if they want to cycle some more fresh arms through the roster.
Photo courtesy of Eric Hartline, Imagn Images
Swanson sang his Swan Song…
He can take up a real job like carpentry, just like Ron Swanson.
@Acoss1331
Julian Merryweather for Josh Donaldson and 3M is the high water mark for Blue Jays worst trades.
Yeah because Donaldson put up manny Ramirez numbers post trade. He was damaged goods that were worthless
@ThatsIT
Follow it forward. If they don’t trade him they can hang a QO on him. If Donaldson accepts he rebuilds his value, which he did. So now you can trade him for a better return. If he declines the QO, the Jays get a draft pick.
Of those 3 options, trading him the following season, getting a draft pick from the QO or receiving a 30 year old MiLB pitcher coming off Tommy John is the worst option.
It’s like the go out of their way to do the dumbest things while thinking they are the smartest people in the room.
Had the relationship soured? I hear Donaldson was pretty grating.
It’s easy to evaluate the Donaldson trade in hindsight – now that we know how Merryweather pitched. The question at the time was what was worth more – Julian Merryweather or a draft pick. JW was worth the risk. It didn’t work out. Donaldson wanted out and was hurt most of the year.
And while all the AA apologists point out this trade and the Teoscar trade, it’s funny how no one brings up the Halliday trade. THAT’S the biggest trade opportunity we ever had. And we got next to nothing for him.
NS
Jays missed the boat on Donaldson by not moving him earlier. His “value” went to 0 as soon as they limped away from starting a rebuilsd/rebranding a year or two earlier.
@MagRupe
Funny how the AA haters fail to mention that the pool of teams that AA had was very small. He wasn’t going to trade trade him to the Yanks, as an example. Halliday kicking the Jays butts for years isn’t a good look. Hell, Halliday kicking the Jays butts on any AL team isn’t a good look.
Only NL teams then and they had to be in contention because Halliday wanted to win. That’s.. 2 or 3 teams?
And Halliday asked for the trade. So it had to be done quickly. None of the situations were conducive to getting a good deal.
Halladay literally only approved a trade to one place, the Phillies, so he wouldn’t have to move his family. There was no other option. If AA had somehow made other teams they had a chance to up the bidding from the Phillies that would have been amazing but there’s not much else he could have done.
Halladay ultimately turned into Devon Travis. Who sadly had a bum knee. He was pretty solid when he was able to play. And also maybe like 1/4 of RA Dickey.
Good backstory and info thank you. All the replies to you have been good too learned something about the Jays.
100% correct NoSaints. QO was the obvious move.
Mag it was either draft pick or Donaldson signs it and is traded midseason. Not an aging, injury-prone pitcher who hadn’t proven much of anything.
It wasn’t. He was a club house cancer.
I’ve seen a lot of bad trades as a Blue Jays fan, but Teoscar Hernandez for Erik Swanson is up there with the very worst of them
Holding out hope for Macko!
@longsuffering
From Fangraphs, “Macko’s plus secondary stuff and uphill fastball should enable him to inefficiently miss bats in a long relief role.”
inefficiently miss bats and long relief role doesn’t warrant hope.
Ya it was so bad they had to replace him with a worse player in Santander who could now be in the running for worst contract in the jays history
Santander was a swing a miss for this year. Next year he’ll be back better. Can’t do much about injuries. I liked the try by Shapiro and Atkins.
to be fair Swanson was legit year before trade and one year after.
He was dominate in relief role – Am sure Macko was thought to be the future in the deal and likely they were not going to be able to resign Teoscar so that could have played a part.
Why do fans like yourself not understand control? One year of a corner OF is not worth all that much in trade. Look at his numbers in Seattle how much are you paying for that production. You can’t count what he’s doing in LA it’s a different contract.
Why do fans like yourself not understand that once you trade one of the elite power hitting position players in the game your offense will tank and you also lose any realistic chance of ever re-signing him?
I liked the idea of trading Teoscar but as usual it didn’t go well. The thought was good the implementation, terrible.
It would have been better to give Teoscar Santander money.
Firstly I know more about baseball than you. Secondly I’ve forgot more about baseball than you ever know.
Teo was coming off his third straight 130wrc+ season, his struggles with seattle have zero to do with his value at the moment of the trade.
Also have to factor in that teams looking to acquire him would have assume getting a QO as well.
We have the benefit of hindsight now but jays lost an important piece AND QO compensation or the ability to negotiate with him before the rest of the 29 other teams
Jays fans, is this a phantom IL stint for Francis? Was wondering what was going on with him and what they’d do about it
@twopitchmix
Francis has option. They could have just as easily sent him to AAA.
Shoulder impingements are brutal. Someone with an impingement can’t even lift a baseball let alone throw it. I have had two of them.
I hope Swanson heads to the mariners or cardinals. Mariners for a reunion and cards bc they need bullpen
If upgrading the bullpen is the goal, I’m not sure getting Swanson is the best course of action.
Who needs teoscar when you got one year outta Swanson pow!
Swanson is batting practice at the moment
Mariners won this trade.
It’s the rare both teams lost type of deal
How? Hernandez kinda sucked for that one year he was in Seattle and Swanson was very solid that season. As another commenter mentioned, what Teoscar is doing now in LA is not relevant to the trade.
@C-Daddy
During his time with the Jays Swanson put up a -0.2 fWAR. Teoscar’s one year in Seattle got him a 1.9 fWAR. That’s how they won the trade.
The Jays could have extended Teoscar with Santander money and gotten the current production.
If the M’s had put a QO on Teoscar to get a draft pick for when he left, then they would have won this trade. But they couldn’t afford him and had to let him go unqualified.
Now Erik can focus on improving the quality of the Swanson Family’s
TV Dinners !!
As said above, for what it is worth, the Jays in fact are pretty close to the laughing stock of MLB. Quality players don’t want to play for Shapiro but they use the Jays as contract bait to leverage other teams [Soto, Ohtani, others]. Soto had two teams he would play for and used the others to negotiate. Ohtani would only play for the Dodgers and the plane nonsense was called nonsense when it happened.
The trade for Swanson was okay, not great. As said above, it was a good idea to trade Hernandez but he needed to be replaced in the batting order by another slugger, which he wasn’t..
Alphonse and Gaston at work.
The last 10 years of Shapiro has netted one drafted and developed starter, Manoah. How did that work out mentally or physically? Shapiro’s strategy signing of aged starters doesn’t work either. Most end up on a decline or injured. Their trades for near ready starters don’t work much either [Francis, Macko, Waguespack etc].
I like what they did to get Berrios. Even a blind man can hit the wall by throwing a dart.
I like their current relievers save a few.
The bottom line is that Shapiro cannot draft, or develop, or trade, or sign longterm effective starters that can be championship group quality. As said in 2015-2016, this team will never win a championship with Shapiro at the helm of baseball ops. He needs to be moved to where he is brilliant: business only. He needs to be given a medal for getting the club and fans through covid and renovating the dome, the Bisons home field and the Florida complex.
Can see AA sign Swanson to help out with that bullpen. Oof are they really struggling .
Jerry Dipoto waiting for free agency on Swanson.
Well…at least he won’t have to endure the long lineups at customs anymore.
By not drafting enough pitching (or acquiring) between 2016-2019 it forced the Jays to make a trade they shouldn’t have made. Or, they should have made a decision between trading Teoscar or Gurriel, not both. Combined with the loss of Semien’s production in 2021, the Jays since 2023 has not carried a feared lineup like they once did.
For those that bought the narrative that the potent Jays lineup needed more LH bats you would’ve wanted Teoscar’s 2023-24 production in that lineup protecting Vladdy. But the bullpen needed to be addressed through trading assets at the time.