The Blue Jays have signed left-hander Michael Plassmeyer to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. He has been assigned to Triple-A Buffalo for now but will presumably be invited to big league camp in spring training.
Plassmeyer, 29, has a very small major league résumé. He made two appearances for the Phillies in 2022 and one more the following year. In total, he has 11 innings in the show. Unfortunately, he allowed 12 earned runs in that time, so he currently sports an unsightly 9.82 ERA.
That’s obviously a tiny sample of work and the Jays are presumably looking past that to the larger sample size of his minor league history. Over the past five years, he has appeared in 125 minor league games, including 89 starts. In 489 1/3 innings, he struck out 24.7% of batters faced while only giving out walks 7% of the time, both of those figures being slightly better than average. However, a tendency to give up home runs push his ERA to 4.97 in that span.
The Jays have been loading up on pitching so far this offseason. They have added Dylan Cease and Cody Ponce to a rotation that already featured Kevin Gausman, Shane Bieber, Trey Yesavage, José Berríos, Eric Lauer and others. They have also bolstered the bullpen by agreeing to a deal with Tyler Rogers, acquiring Chase Lee from the Tigers and selecting Spencer Miles from the Giants in the Rule 5 draft.
It’s a crowded picture right now but a big league team needs dozens of arms over the course of a long season. If Plassmeyer is added to the 40-man at any point, he still has an option, meaning he could be sent between Buffalo and Toronto as needed. He also has just five days of big league service time, meaning he’s affordable and still years away from qualifying from free agency.
Photo courtesy of Brad Penner, Imagn Images
This is what they needed to win 2025 WS. Damn timing is everything
Happy for this guy!!!! Awesome dude!
I’m not saying anything negative about any minor league signing after Eric Lauer this past year. You just never know where a breakout is going to happen, and the Jays are usually pretty decent at identifying players who may have been overlooked or underused in the past.
Another left-hander!!!! Atkins keen on amassing bullpen southpaws en masse.
Picking Spencer Miles in the Rule 5 draft is interesting. How does a guy with just 14 innings thrown as a professional, since being drafted in 2022, even get considered on a team that was one run away from winning the 2025 World Series?
Weird signing but least he’s been a MLB & no one here posting has been, Good for him