Diamondbacks star Corbin Carroll suffered a broken hamate bone in his right hand yesterday during batting practice, Steve Gilbert of MLB.com reports. He’s slated to undergo surgery today, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan. That’ll sideline Carroll for the majority of camp and seems likely to land him on the injured list to begin the 2026 season.
More to come.
Orioles second baseman Jackson Holliday will open the 2026 season on the injured list after suffering a fractured hamate bone in his right hand during live batting practice on Feb. 6, president of baseball operations Mike Elias announced to the team’s beat this morning (link via Andy Kostka of the Baltimore Banner). He’ll likely miss the first several weeks of the season.
Elias also added that infielder Jordan Westburg suffered an oblique injury three weeks ago while training but is only expected to miss the first few games of Grapefruit League play (via MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubatko). The team isn’t concerned about his Opening Day status at this juncture. Righty Colin Selby, meanwhile, is dealing with inflammation in his right shoulder and is expected to open the season on the injured list (per Matt Weyrich of the Baltimore Sun).
The Holliday injury is the most notable of the bunch. The former No. 1 pick and top prospect had been in line to open the season at second base after hitting .242/.314/.375 with 17 homers and 17 steals in his age-21 season with the O’s last year. Second base will now presumably fall to some combination of trade acquisition Blaze Alexander and utilityman Jeremiah Jackson. Alternatively, Baltimore could play Westburg at second base and give Coby Mayo some run at third base to begin the season.
Many fans on social media were quick to jump to the conclusion that the Holliday injury was a driving factor behind Baltimore’s acquisition of Alexander in last week’s trade with the Diamondbacks. However, the timing was a matter of happenstance; Holliday actually suffered the fracture in his hand/wrist the day after the Alexander trade was completed. Perhaps there was some modest concern about Westburg’s oblique at the time, but Holliday’s injury didn’t have any impact on that swap.
More to come.
Feb. 11: Olson tells Chris McCosky of the Detroit News that he reinjured his shoulder last October, several months after the initial injury. He knew surgery was possible at that point, but he’d have missed the entire 2026 season even he went under the knife right away, so he opted to try to rehab for the next few months, figuring he had nothing to lose. Obviously, the rehab process didn’t prove sufficient, and he’ll now aim to be back on the mound in 2027.
Feb. 10: Tigers right-hander Reese Olson is done for the year after undergoing a right shoulder labral repair, the team announced. Olson has been placed on the 60-day IL, along with fellow right-hander Jackson Jobe. The moves will open up 40-man roster spots for recent free agent additions Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander.
Olson’s 2025 season ended in late July due to a right shoulder strain. There had been rumblings that he might not be ready for Opening Day, but there hadn’t been any indication that he’d be sidelined for an extended time. His surgery went down on Feb. 2, per the team announcement. Jobe’s move to the 60-day IL was anticipated. He had Tommy John surgery in June and is set to miss most, if not all, of the upcoming season.
The Valdez and Verlander signings make more sense following the Olson revelation. Detroit will now have Valdez and Tarik Skubal at the top of the rotation, followed in some order by Verlander, Jack Flaherty, and Casey Mize. Troy Melton will serve as a depth option. Jobe could join the mix later in the season.
The 26-year-old Olson has been a reliable member of the Detroit rotation since his debut in 2023. He’s compiled a 3.60 ERA with decent strikeout and walk numbers across 56 big-league appearances. Injuries have been the main limiting factor. Olson missed the majority of the second half in 2024 with a shoulder strain. He missed time in the middle of last season with finger inflammation. Olson made it back for just four games after the finger issue before going down with the most recent shoulder strain.
Detroit acquired Olson from the Brewers straight up for Daniel Norris at the 2021 trade deadline. He finished that season at Double-A in the Tigers’ system. Olson spiked a 33.1% strikeout rate in a repeat of the level in 2022. He earned a promotion to Triple-A in 2023, where he continued to miss bats at a well-above-average clip. Olson’s 6.38 ERA with Toledo didn’t suggest a callup was imminent, though his FIP was more than a run lower. He made 18 starts with Detroit that season, including a dominant September where he allowed five earned runs across five appearances.
Olson hasn’t been able to replicate the strikeout upside he showed in the minor leagues, despite a pair of plus swing-and-miss pitches. The righty’s changeup and slider both had whiff rates above 42% in 2024 and 2025. Olson has posted an identical 12.7% swinging-strike rate in each of the past two seasons. The arsenal just hasn’t translated to punchouts. Olson has been right around league average in strikeout rate at the MLB level. He hasn’t reached a strikeout per inning in any season with the Tigers.
Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images
On the heels of an early-morning signing, here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world today:
1. Pitchers and catchers continue reporting:
After a handful of teams with early report dates officially kicked off Spring Training yesterday, half of MLB’s clubs are following suit Wednesday. In Arizona’s Cactus League, the A’s, Cubs, Reds, Royals, Angels, and Padres are all reporting. There are even more clubs reporting in Florida’s Grapefruit League, as the Orioles, Tigers, Astros, Marlins, Mets, Phillies, Pirates, Blue Jays, and Nationals are all officially kicking off Spring Training this morning. Edward Cabrera (Cubs), Grayson Rodriguez (Angels), Shane Baz (Orioles), Framber Valdez (Tigers), Tatsuya Imai (Astros), Freddy Peralta (Mets), and Dylan Cease (Blue Jays) are among the most notable players appearing in camp with new teams this year. As we saw throughout the day Tuesday, the opening of camp could also bring about both notable injury updates and some late-winter signings.
2. Pirates 40-man moves incoming?
The Pirates have not yet officially announced their signings of right-hander Jose Urquidy and DH Marcell Ozuna. Both of those moves could be made official as soon as today, and in doing so the Pirates will need to make a pair of 40-man moves to accommodate the new additions. Promising right-hander Jared Jones is still rehabbing from last year’s internal brace surgery and could be a 60-day IL option, depending on how that rehab process has progressed over the winter. (The team will likely have an update early in camp.) He’s the only potential 60-day IL candidate, so Pittsburgh will likely have to to designate a player for assignment or work out a trade that clears a 40-man roster spot.
3. Will injuries spur movement on the market?
Yesterday saw the Tigers reunite with future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander on a one-year deal, but the veteran’s return to Detroit was predicated at least in part on some tough news for fans in Detroit: talented right-hander Reese Olson will miss the 2026 season due to shoulder surgery. The Tigers weren’t the only team to announce a major rotation injury yesterday. The Braves will be without right-hander Spencer Schwellenbach to open the 2026 campaign after he was placed on the 60-day injured list, while Toronto will be without Shane Bieber for the start of the season (plus Bowden Francis for the entirety of it following Tommy John surgery). With prominent arms like Zac Gallen, Chris Bassitt, and Lucas Giolito still available, will those clubs look to firm up their staff like the Tigers did?
Feb. 11: Schwellenbach details (video link via Chad Bishop of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) that he felt strong throughout the offseason and had thrown off a mound four or five times without issue before experiencing discomfort right at the end of a 20-pitch bullpen session about ten days ago. He’s since undergone imaging that led to his diagnosis and 60-day IL placement. Schwellenbach says he might require arthroscopic surgery — nothing is scheduled yet — and isn’t sure what the recovery period would be from that procedure.
Feb. 10: The Braves opened camp this morning with an unwelcome update on talented young righty Spencer Schwellenbach. He’s been placed on the 60-day injured list due to inflammation in his right elbow, per Mark Bowman of MLB.com.
The team’s hope is that the 25-year-old is dealing with bone spurs and not something more nefarious. Regardless, since the “60-day” term begins on Opening Day (and can only be backdated a maximum of three days), Schwellenbach will miss at least two months of action to begin the season. His IL placement should open space on the roster for catcher Jonah Heim, who agreed to a one-year deal with Atlanta earlier today.
Injuries to the pitching staff were the hallmark of Atlanta’s 2025 season, and their 2026 campaign isn’t starting out much differently. The Braves have already been on the lookout for rotation help — perhaps already knowing that Schwellenbach would be sidelined — with reported interest in Chris Bassitt and Lucas Giolito, among others. Atlanta has already had to make one late-offseason pivot, signing Jorge Mateo and Kyle Farmer (the latter on a minor league deal) after Ha-Seong Kim suffered a torn tendon in his hand when he slipped on some ice and fell in a fluke off-field injury. He’ll need four to five months to recover from the subsequent surgery. Schwellenbach’s injury seems to set the stage for another late addition.
The Braves had already been facing workload and health concerns in the rotation. Chris Sale missed significant time with a ribcage fracture last season and has a lengthy injury history. Spencer Strider’s return from UCL surgery produced results that were nowhere close to his star-caliber performance prior to injury. Schwellenbach missed months due to an elbow fracture. Reynaldo Lopez only made one start last year due to shoulder surgery. Promising young righty AJ Smith-Shawver was shelved after a handful of starts due to his own Tommy John procedure.
Entering the year, the Atlanta rotation figured to include Sale, Strider, Schwellenbach, Lopez and one of Hurston Waldrep, Grant Holmes, Bryce Elder, Didier Fuentes or an external addition such as Giolito or Bassitt. The Braves are down to three established veterans (Sale, Strider, Lopez), none of whom is coming off a peak season in terms of both health and performance. There ought to be a fair bit of urgency to add another starter to help keep pace in a perennially competitive National League East.
How much space the Braves do or don’t have to make that rotation addition happen isn’t fully clear. RosterResource projects an actual cash payroll around $268MM and a CBT payroll about $10MM less than that. That puts the Braves around $6MM shy of the second tier of luxury tax penalization. They’d owe a 20% tax on any dollars up to the $264MM luxury mark and a 32% tax on anything from $264MM to $284MM. That’s presumably the point at which Atlanta would prefer to halt its spending, given that crossing the $284MM third-tier threshold is the point at which a team’s top draft pick is dropped by 10 places.
The Rangers are bringing back old friend Jordan Montgomery, according to a report from Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Montgomery will make $1.25MM on a one-year, MLB deal. The deal also includes performance bonuses. Montgomery is represented by Wasserman. Texas will need to create a 40-man roster spot to accommodate Montgomery once the signing becomes official.
Montgomery, 33, missed the entire 2025 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery last March. He’ll open the season on the 60-day injured list, according to Grant, but the lefty figures to factor into the team’s rotation later this year once he’s finished his rehab process. Grant suggests that could come at some point in the second half, though it’s at least plausible the lefty could return before that if he avoids any setbacks in his rehab. Nathan Eovaldi, Jacob deGrom, MacKenzie Gore, and Jack Leiter all appear to be more or less locked into rotation spots for Texas to open the year, with Jacob Latz and Kumar Rocker among the options to kick off the season in that fifth rotation spot.
As pitching injuries become more and more common around the league, it’s impossible to say what the state of the Rangers rotation will look like once Montgomery is healthy enough to rejoin the staff. If everyone is healthy, Montgomery take over that fifth starter job if Latz and/or Rocker has struggled, or could simply expand the Rangers’ rotation to six men depending on the needs of the club at the time. Of course, both Eovaldi and Gore missed significant time due to injuries last year and deGrom has a lengthy injury history of his own. A fully healthy rotation all year long can’t be assumed, and that could leave Montgomery to serve in a pivotal role for the Rangers by providing reinforcements at some point.
Whenever Montgomery does wind up returning to the big league mound, the quality of his performance will be a source of considerable intrigue. It wasn’t all that long ago that Montgomery was a World Series hero in Texas who hit the open market coming off a stretch of seasons with the Rangers, Cardinals, and Yankees where he looked like a high-end #2 starter. It seemed likely he’d get a free agent contract to match that pedigree, but he lingered on the market during the 2023-24 offseason and became one of the oft-discussed “Boras Four” alongside Blake Snell, Cody Bellinger, and Matt Chapman. All four wound up signing pillow contracts late in the year, and while the other three all went on to have success and sign much larger deals in the years afterwards, the same did not happen for Montgomery.
The lefty’s career has taken a tumble since signing that pillow contract with the Diamondbacks. He struggled badly in 2024 with a 6.23 ERA in 117 innings for the Snakes. He changed his representation and accused Boras of having “butchered” his free agency, while Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick publicly expressed frustration with having signed Montgomery, calling it a “horrible decision.” That acrimonious relationship came to an end at the trade deadline last year, when the Diamondbacks dumped what little remained of Montgomery’s contract on the Brewers in a trade that also sent righty Shelby Miller to Milwaukee. Montgomery, of course, did not pitch for the Brew Crew as he rehabbed and found himself back in free agency this offseason.
Given Montgomery’s disastrous 2024 campaign and lost season in 2025, it would be fair to consider the fact that the Rangers offered him a big league contract a notable vote of confidence in his ability to get back to being an above-average starter, even in spite of the relatively small base salary that the deal comes with. Signing a player like Montgomery who won’t be ready to contribute on Opening Day doesn’t necessarily prevent the Rangers from adding more to their rotation, especially if injuries crop up early in the season. With that being said, however, choosing to add a player like Montgomery rather than someone who could be ready to start games when the season begins could signal that the team is comfortable having Latz or Rocker open the season in the rotation and doesn’t feel much pressure to put additional competition into the mix for that particular camp battle.
It’s homecoming season in Detroit. After years of Tigers fans hoping for a reunion with future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander, the team announced Tuesday that Verlander has been signed to a one-year contract for the 2026 season. The ISE client is guaranteed $13MM, per USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, though $11MM of that sum will be deferred and paid out beginning in 2030.
Though he’ll turn 43 later this month, Verlander has voiced no desire to call it quits. Rather, he’s previously said he hopes to pitch well into his mid 40s. He’s coming off a solid season at age 42 — one that started slowly but by the end saw Verlander again pitching like a high-quality big league starter. The right-hander pitched 152 innings for the Giants last season, logging a 3.85 ERA, a 20.7% strikeout rate, a 7.9% walk rate and a 34.5% ground-ball rate.
Those are solid overall numbers but mask the strength of Verlander’s finish. Over his final 13 trips to the mound, he totaled 72 2/3 innings with a terrific 2.60 ERA, a 22.8% strikeout rate and a 7.8% walk rate. Verlander limited hard contact better than the average pitcher, checked in with a 93.9 mph average on his four-seamer and turned in an 11% swinging-strike rate that was an exact match for the league average. He only picked up four wins during his time as a Giant, hindering his quest to chase down the 300-victory milestone, but that was due more to poor run support and shaky bullpen work behind him than anything Verlander specifically did.
Verlander returns to what now looks like a stacked Detroit rotation. He’ll reunite with former Astros teammate Framber Valdez, who agreed to a three-year, $115MM contract with Detroit just last week. That pair will join ace Tarik Skubal as he looks to join Verlander as a three-time Cy Young winner. The rotation will be rounded out by right-handers Jack Flaherty and Casey Mize, A healthy Reese Olson would have been among Detroit’s top five starters, even with Verlander in tow, but the team revealed this afternoon that he suffered a setback from last season’s shoulder injury and underwent season-ending surgery.
In all likelihood, there’ll be plenty of starts to go around for other rotation candidates, including promising righty Troy Melton. Injuries are inevitable, so there probably won’t be too many stretches of the season where all six of Skubal, Valdez, Verlander, Mize, Flaherty and Drew Anderson are all at full strength. Top prospect Jackson Jobe could factor into the mix late in the season as well, but he’ll miss the majority of the year after undergoing Tommy John surgery last summer. Even still, simply having someone of Verlander’s stature around to watch and learn from during spring training is an opportunity that Jobe (and other young arms in Tigers camp) will undoubtedly relish.
Whether coincidence or otherwise, Verlander’s $13MM guarantee matches the $13MM gap the Tigers faced in last week’s arbitration hearing with Skubal. The reigning AL Cy Young winner won that hearing. Perhaps the Tigers wouldn’t have gone quite so deferral-heavy on the contract had the arbitration panel ruled in favor of the team, but that’s a moot point. Either way, Verlander is back with the team that originally drafted him with No. 2 overall pick out of Old Dominion back in 2004, and he’ll continue his longshot quest to become MLB’s 25th 300-game winner.
Verlander currently sits at 266 wins in his illustrious career, tied with Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Eppa Rixey for 37th-most in the game’s history. He’ll probably need three more seasons to have a chance at reaching the 300 mark, but he’s previously said he hopes to pitch until he is at least 45. Based on last year’s strong finish and his overall rate stats, he still has something left in the tank as he works toward that lofty goal.
The late additions of Valdez and Verlander will thrust the Tigers into luxury tax territory for the first time. RosterResource’s estimates currently have Detroit about $12MM over the $244MM threshold. That means they’ll pay a 20% tax on the net-present value of Verlander’s deal. It’s more than the Tigers have ever spent. Those late moves have positioned the Tigers as a clear front-runner in an AL Central that’s been characterized primarily by inertia this offseason. They took their time, but the Tigers have made it emphatically clear that their sights are set on winning the Central and pushing for a World Series win in Skubal’s final season before free agency.
The Rockies have followed up their Michael Lorenzen and Tomoyuki Sugano signings with another free agent deal for a veteran starter. Colorado is reportedly in agreement with left-hander Jose Quintana on a one-year deal, pending a physical. The ACES client is guaranteed $6MM. The Rox will need to open a spot on the 40-man roster once the signing is finalized. Jeff Criswell, who underwent Tommy John surgery last March, is a 60-day injured list candidate.
Quintana signs on the eve of Spring Training after waiting until early March to put pen to paper last winter. He settled for a deferred $4.25MM guarantee with the Brewers that was probably below his expectations coming off a 3.75 ERA in 31 starts for the Mets. Quintana managed decent results in Milwaukee as well, allowing 3.96 earned runs per nine over 131 2/3 innings.
There weren’t a whole lot of encouraging underlying numbers. Quintana’s results have outstripped his peripherals for essentially four consecutive seasons. He has never been a power pitcher, but his already pedestrian velocity and swing-and-miss rates have dropped into his mid-30s. Last year’s 16% strikeout rate was his lowest since the 14% mark he posted in his 2012 rookie season. His sinker and four-seam fastball each land in the 90-91 mph range on average. None of the southpaw’s pitches miss many bats, and last season’s 6.9% swinging strike rate was the second lowest mark for a pitcher who reached 100 innings.
Although the 37-year-old doesn’t have a huge ceiling at this stage of his career, he should raise the floor at the back of Warren Schaeffer’s rotation. The pitch-to-contact approach keeps his walks in check. Quintana doesn’t have notable platoon splits and mixes five pitches (sinker, changeup, curveball, four-seam fastball, and slurve). The deeper arsenal seems to be of particular interest to the Rox’s front office and coaching staff. Lorenzen throws seven distinct pitches, while Sugano has a six-pitch mix.
“We’ve spoken about this internally a lot,” first-year pitching coach Alon Leichman told Patrick Saunders of The Denver Post last week. “We want big arsenals. We think big arsenals will be harder to game plan against. You know, if a guy has six, seven pitches, that’s harder to game plan for than if a guy has two or three, right? So we think that’s an advantage. The more weapons you have, the more random you can be.”
The Rockies have committed just over $19MM to add the trio of veteran starters. They’ll join Kyle Freeland as rotation locks. Ryan Feltner and Chase Dollander would probably compete for the fifth starter role as things stand. There’s a decent chance an injury during Spring Training clarifies things. Feltner missed the majority of last season with back issues. Quintana himself had a pair of IL stints for a shoulder impingement and calf strain, respectively.
While it remains arguably the worst rotation in the majors, the Rockies don’t want a repeat of last year’s historically awful performance. Colorado’s 2025 starting staff had a 6.65 ERA that was the highest in any full MLB season in history. This season’s group should at least be markedly better than that.
None of Lorenzen, Sugano or Quintana are likely to fetch much at the trade deadline even if they’re managing decent results away from Coors Field. They’re all sixth starters/swing types on contenders. There’s nevertheless value in having experienced arms around to take a few innings and work with Dollander and prospects Gabriel Hughes and Sean Sullivan, each of whom could be up at some point in 2026. They’re less likely to need to rely on McCade Brown and Tanner Gordon for early-season starts.
This will push Colorado’s projected payroll to $120MM, as calculated by RosterResource. They opened last season at $122MM and seem set for a nearly identical spending pattern in Paul DePodesta’s first season as president of baseball operations.
Jesse Rogers of ESPN first reported the Rockies and Quintana had an agreement. Robert Murray of FanSided reported the $6MM guarantee. Image courtesy of Mark Hoffman, Imagn Images.
The Braves announced they’ve reacquired infielder Brett Wisely from the Rays for cash. Atlanta placed reliever Joe Jiménez on the 60-day injured list with what they termed a “left articular cartilage injury” to open a spot on the 40-man roster. Atlanta had traded Wisely to Tampa Bay a month ago.
Wisely finished the ’25 season in Atlanta. The Braves had claimed him off waivers from the Giants with a couple weeks remaining in the season. He appeared in four games, starting three of them at second base, and went 0-6 with three walks. The rest of Wisely’s MLB work came in San Francisco, where he hit .217/.263/.324 across 457 plate appearances spanning three seasons.
The lefty-hitting infielder has a better minor league track record. He’s a .275/.372/.433 hitter in more than 800 Triple-A plate appearances. Wisely has shown decent contact skills and a reasonable plate approach but doesn’t have much power in a 5’9″ frame. His exit velocities are at the lower end of the league and he has seven home runs in 168 career games.
Wisely is stretched defensively at shortstop but has logged nearly 300 career innings there. He has experience throughout the infield and in both left and center field. Second base is his most natural position, and both Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average have graded him well in a little more than 700 innings.
The 26-year-old is out of minor league options, meaning the Braves need to keep him on the big league club or send him back into DFA limbo. They designated him for assignment a month ago and flipped him to the Rays, the team that initially drafted him back in 2019. Tampa Bay squeezed him off the roster when they traded for outfielder Victor Mesa Jr. last week.
The intervening acquisition of utility player Ben Williamson in the Brendan Donovan trade made it unlikely Wisely would break camp. There’s a better opportunity in Atlanta with Ha-Seong Kim beginning the season on the injured list. That pushed Mauricio Dubón into the starting shortstop spot. Jorge Mateo is their top utility option, but Wisely could push Nacho Alvarez Jr. for the final bench spot.
The corresponding move confirms that Jiménez is in for another extended absence. The big righty missed the entire 2025 season after undergoing surgery to repair cartilage damage in his left knee the previous November. President of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos announced early this offseason that Jiménez required another procedure. Anthopoulos called that a “cleanup” but didn’t provide any kind of return timeline.
Jiménez evidently isn’t going to be available before the end of May at the earliest. He’s making $9MM in the final season of a three-year free agent contract that started promisingly but has been beset by the injuries. The Braves also placed starter Spencer Schwellenbach on the 60-day IL this morning after revealing that he experienced elbow inflammation during his preparation for Spring Training. AJ Smith-Shawver, Danny Young and Kim are 60-day IL candidates themselves, so the Braves will probably be busy on the waiver wire and potential DFA trades over the next few weeks.
The defending American League champions provided a handful of discouraging injury updates at the first day of Spring Training. In addition to revealing that Anthony Santander will miss the majority of the season rehabbing shoulder surgery, they announced a couple bits of news on the pitching side.
Shane Bieber will begin the season on the 15-day injured list, manager John Schneider told reporters (links via Mitch Bannon of The Athletic and Keegan Matheson of MLB.com). The Jays are slow-playing his buildup after he dealt with forearm fatigue in the playoffs and over the offseason. There’s worse news for depth starter Bowden Francis, as Schneider said he’s headed for Tommy John surgery.
Schneider framed the Bieber situation mostly as an abundance of caution. It was reported around the Winter Meetings that the righty had dealt with late-season forearm fatigue. That explained what had seemed a very curious decision to exercise a $16MM player option rather than pursuing a multi-year contract.
Bieber missed most of the 2023-24 seasons rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. He felt a bit of elbow soreness last summer but was otherwise healthy enough to pitch the stretch run and throughout the playoffs. Bieber combined for 59 innings between the regular season and postseason. The Jays declined to provide any kind of timetable for his season debut, though both Schneider and GM Ross Atkins suggested they expect him to get plenty of work this season. Bieber has been throwing off flat ground up to 90 feet.
That answers any questions about whether the Jays had “too much” starting pitching to begin the season. José Berríos was reportedly displeased with being pushed out of the projected playoff rotation last year. He might have been sixth on the depth chart at full strength, but he’s now locked into the Opening Day rotation (assuming he gets through camp healthy himself). The Jays have a projected starting five of Dylan Cease, Trey Yesavage, Kevin Gausman, Cody Ponce and Berríos.
Losing Francis subtracts one of their depth arms. The 29-year-old righty took the ball 14 times last year, though he struggled to a 6.05 ERA before going down with a shoulder impingement in the middle of June. He spent the second half of the season on the 60-day injured list. He’ll land back on the IL whenever the Jays need to open a 40-man roster spot and spend the rest of the year there. Francis will be paid around the MLB minimum rate but seems likely to lose his roster spot at the end of the season when teams need to reinstate players from the IL.
Toronto is also without righty Jake Bloss, who is working back from his own elbow procedure (performed last May). Lefty Eric Lauer projects for a long relief role if everyone’s healthy but would be the obvious choice to step into the rotation if anyone else goes down before Opening Day. The other pitchers on the 40-man roster are light on big league experience, meaning one more injury could leave them looking quite thin.
There are a handful of mid-rotation caliber starters still unsigned — old friends Chris Bassitt and Max Scherzer among the group. The Jays have pushed their luxury tax payroll estimate north of $310MM, easily a franchise record. They kicked the tires on Framber Valdez as he lingered on the open market into February, so it seems there’s still a chance of another move if they want to add some stability to the back end.
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