Yankees Select Tim Mayza
The Yankees announced that they have selected the contract of left-hander Tim Mayza. They signed the lefty to a minor league deal after he was released by the Blue Jays last month. They optioned Will Warren after Wednesday’s game and designated Enyel De Los Santos earlier this week, meaning they already had a vacancy on both the active and 40-man rosters.
It’s been a strange year for Mayza, who had a strong run for the Jays before everything seemed to come off the rails this year. From 2017 to 2023, he made 317 appearances for the Jays, despite missing the 2020 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. In that stretch, he allowed 3.47 earned runs per nine innings. He struck out 25.7% of batters faced, walked just 7.8% of opponents and got ground balls on 54.4% of balls in play. He racked up four saves and 77 holds in that period.
But here in 2024, his 35 appearances for the Jays were disastrous, leading to an 8.04 ERA. He surely wasn’t helped by a .367 batting average on balls in play or his 54.8% strand rate, but he also only struck out 13.2% of batters faced.
He was designated for assignment by the Jays at the end of June. Since he had passed five years of service time this year, he earned the right to reject an outright assignment while retaining his $3.59MM salary. The Jays skipped that formality and released him, leaving them on the hook for the rest of that money.
The Yankees signed him to a minor league deal and sent him to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. He has since made nine appearances for the RailRiders, allowing two earned runs in 8 1/3 innings. He has struck out eight opponents against three walks.
That will get him another shot in the big leagues, giving manager Aaron Boone a second left-handed option alongside Tim Hill. Now that Mayza has more than five years of service, he can’t be optioned to the minors without his consent. But if he manages to stick around, he can be retained via arbitration for the 2025 season.
For now, it’s a fairly low-risk move, as the Yankees will only have to pay Mayza the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the roster. That amount will be subtracted from what the Jays pay, which will make a small dent in their competitive balance tax calculation. Last week, Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro said the Jays were just under the tax line but that the situation was “fluid”.
Yankees Sign Tim Mayza To Minor League Deal
The Yankees have signed left-hander Tim Mayza to a minor league deal, according to a report from Brendan Kuty and Katie Woo of The Athletic. The lefty will presumably be assigned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre shortly.
Mayza, 32, was recently released by the Blue Jays as he’s had an awful season thus far. He made 35 appearances for the Jays, logging 24 2/3 innings with 8.03 earned runs allowed per nine. His 9.9% walk rate on the year is passable but he has only struck out 13.2% of batters faced and his ground ball rate has been subpar at 39.1%.
Despite the recent struggles, it’s easy to see why the Yanks would be interested. Mayza underwent Tommy John surgery late in 2019 and missed all of 2020, but has was quite good between that absence and this year’s dip. Over the 2021-23 period, he made 193 appearances for the Jays with a 2.67 ERA, 24.9% strikeout rate, 6.3% walk rate and 58.3% ground ball rate. He earned four saves and 56 holds for the Jays in that time.
All those numbers have moved in the wrong direction here in 2024, but there are reasons to suspect he’s not been as bad as an 8.03 ERA would suggest. His .367 batting average on balls in play and 54.8% strand rate have both been on the unfortunate side of average, which is why his 4.91 FIP and 5.08 SIERA paint a rosier picture of his work this year. The lack of strikeouts and ground balls this year undoubtedly exacerbated that bad luck a bit, but expecting some better results going forward is within reason.
The Yanks have been trying to solve the left-handed relief portion of their roster this season. Victor González was recently bounced off the roster after some shaky outings. Caleb Ferguson has held onto his spot despite a 5.46 ERA this year. They recently bought low on veteran groundballer Tim Hill and have also given limited looks to Anthony Misiewicz and Josh Maciejewski.
If Mayza can turn a corner and show that the first half of 2024 was just a bad stretch, there’s a path for him to get into that mix. The Yanks can get an up-close look at him for the next few weeks while they also assess who could be available on the trade market prior to the July 30 deadline.
Mayza is making $3.59MM this year but the Jays are on the hook for that since they released him. If the Yanks add him to the roster at any point, they would only have to pay him the prorated version of the league minimum for any time Mayza spends on the roster, with that amount subtracted from what the Jays pay. Mayza crossed over five years of service time earlier this year and can no longer be optioned to the minors, but if he gets a 40-man roster spot at some point, he can be retained via arbitration for the 2025 season.
Blue Jays Release Tim Mayza
The Blue Jays have released Tim Mayza, according to the left-hander’s player page on MLB.com. He was designated for assignment last week.
This marks the end, at least for now, of Mayza’s 11-year career with Toronto. The Blue Jays selected him in the 2013 draft, and he made his MLB debut at the Rogers Centre four years later. He would go on to make 352 appearances over the next eight years, far more than any other pitcher on the team in that span; he ranks eighth all-time in appearances by a Blue Jays pitcher.
Mayza became a key player in Toronto’s bullpen in 2021, and over the next three years, he pitched 155 innings with a 2.67 ERA. The southpaw had the best season of his career just last year, pitching to a 1.52 ERA in 69 games. His underlying stats were not quite as impressive, but his 3.11 SIERA and 3.38 xERA were still good numbers, especially for a higher-leverage reliever like Mayza. Thus, his struggles in 2024 came as a major surprise.
In 24 2/3 innings over 35 games this year, Mayza gave up 24 runs (22 earned) on 36 hits and 12 walks. He managed to strike out only 16 of the 121 batters he faced. All of that added up to an 8.03 ERA, which makes him the only reliever in the league (min. 20 IP) with an ERA over 8.00. While his underlying numbers are better than his ERA, they’re still disappointing across the board. His 5.04 SIERA and 6.77 xERA both rank last among Blue Jays relievers (min. 10 IP), which is especially bad considering the Blue Jays have had one of the least effective bullpens in baseball this season. With all that in mind, the team’s decision to release Mayza is not difficult to understand – even though it would have been almost impossible to imagine at the beginning of the year.
After more than a decade with the Blue Jays, Mayza will now be able to seek employment elsewhere. At 32 years old, he could be an intriguing reclamation project for an organization that thinks it can help him regain his 2023 form.
Blue Jays Designate Tim Mayza For Assignment
The Blue Jays announced that left-hander Tim Mayza has been designated for assignment. Righty Jose Cuas (just claimed off waivers from the Cubs last week) has been called up from Triple-A Buffalo to take Mayza’s spot on the active roster.
Today’s news likely ends Mayza’s tenure with the Jays, which began when he was a 12th-round pick for the club in the 2013 draft. (Danny Jansen was a 16th-round pick in that same draft and is now officially Toronto’s longest-tenured player.) Designating Mayza would’ve seemed inconceivable just a few months ago, as Mayza was quietly one of baseball’s better relievers in 2023, posting a 1.52 ERA over 53 1/3 frames. A 3.11 SIERA was a little less flattering, but Mayza still had solidly above-average walk and strikeout rates, as well as elite grounder (58.2%) and barrel (4.1%) rates. Mayza allowed only two homers over his 53 1/3 innings, as while he allowed a fair amount of hard contract overall, his ability to keep the ball in the park greatly limited the damage.
However, the dropoff has been as sharp as it was unexpected. Mayza has already allowed three home runs in 24 2/3 innings this season, contributing to a garish 8.03 ERA. The Statcast numbers reveal a slew of below-average metrics, including a 13.2% strikeout rate that is among the worst in the league, and a 39.1% grounder rate that is far below the 54.4% career average that Mayza carried into 2024. A .367 BABIP has partially contributed to Mayza’s problems, though while his 5.03 SIERA is three runs lower than his ERA, it is clear that Mayza’s struggles are due to far more than just bad batted-ball luck.
Things reached a low point in Mayza’s last two outings, as he faced eight batters and allowed seven earned runs without recording even a single out. These two disastrous performances (against the Red Sox last Monday and against the Yankees last night) raised his ERA from 5.47 to 8.03, and essentially might have forced the Blue Jays’ hand in making a tough call on a veteran reliever.
Starting the season with four years and 156 days of MLB service time, Mayza needed just 16 more days on the big league roster to hit the five-year threshold, so he is now far beyond that mark. Five years of service time gives Mayza the right to refuse a minor league assignment, and though he has two minor league options remaining, it could be that Mayza exercised his right to pass on a trip to Triple-A Buffalo.
In deciding to DFA Mayza, Toronto has now left open the possibility that he could leave the organization altogether via waiver claim. A claiming club would have to cover the roughly $1.7MM remaining of Mayza’s remaining salary, and since the Jays would be eating that money in the event of a release, it is possible teams might choose to see if Mayza indeed hits the open market in order to save some cash. That said, Mayza’s salary isn’t particularly onerous, so any number of teams with bullpen needs might very well be looking to put in a claim or to work out a trade with the Blue Jays during the DFA period. As rough as Mayza’s performance has been in 2024, he could be an interesting change-of-scenery candidate, given his stronger career track record.
After a Tommy John surgery cost him the entire 2020 season, Mayza returned to post a 2.67 ERA over 155 relief innings from 2021-23, along with a 24.9% strikeout rate, 6.3% walk rate, and 58.3% groundball rate. He has naturally been a lot better against left-handed batters than right-handed batters over his career, and even amidst his struggles this year, Mayza has held lefty swingers to a .280/.362/.360 slash line in 58 PA. The batting average and OBP leave something to be desired, but at least this version of Mayza can still limit the power of left-handed hitters.
Since Mayza is also a Super Two player, he has another year of arbitration eligibility before hitting free agency following the 2025 season. If Mayza joins another team and gets back to his old form, he suddenly becomes an inexpensive piece for a club’s roster next season as well.
Blue Jays relievers have a collective 4.78 ERA this season, ranking 28th of the 30 Major League bullpens. Injuries to Jordan Romano and Yimi Garcia haven’t helped matters, but Romano was struggling even when not on the injured list, and both Mayza and Erik Swanson (who has been optioned to Triple-A) saw their production crater after impressive 2023 seasons.
Between the leaky bullpen, the inconsistent offense, and a starting rotation that pretty average across the board, not much as gone right for the Blue Jays as they have stumbled to a 37-44 record. The Jays already parted ways with another struggling homegrown player in Cavan Biggio earlier this month when Biggio was traded to the Dodgers, and if Mayza is also traded or claimed away on waivers, the moves essentially act as harbingers that Toronto will be selling at the deadline. GM Ross Atkins said two days ago that the Jays are still “focused on building the best possible team we can this year,” but “if we get to a point where we need to adjust, we’ll be prepared to do so.“
AL Notes: Yankees, Stanton, Blue Jays, Mayza, Twins, Maeda
Giancarlo Stanton is beginning a rehab assignment today, per Lindsey Adler of The Athletic (via Twitter). Before this latest injury, Stanton had been enjoying a run of sound health. For the season, Stanton has appeared in 80 games, slashing .228/.309/.498 with 24 home runs in 328 plate appearances. Stanton even started 38 games in the outfield grass, his most defensive action since 2018. Elsewhere around the Junior Circuit…
- Blue Jays southpaw Tim Mayza will begin a rehab assignment in Triple-A today, per Keegan Matheson of MLB.com (via Twitter). Mayza has been a key piece of Toronto’s bullpen for a number of years, no less so this season when he has pitched to a 2.88 ERA/3.94 FIP across 41 appearances totaling 34 1/3 innings. Mayza has been out of action since August 7th. The 30-year-old has held lefties to a .157/.218/.275 line this season.
- The Twins are cautiously optimistic that Kenta Maeda might be able to return late in the season to pitch out of the bullpen as he used to for the Dodgers. Maeda is throwing bullpens now, but President of Baseball Ops Derek Falvey was non-commital about Maeda’s ability to make a late-season appearance, per Darren Wolfson of 5 Eyewitness News (via Twitter). Maeda is recovering from Tommy John surgery.
Blue Jays Place Tim Mayza On IL With Dislocated Right Shoulder
Aug. 7: The Blue Jays announced Mayza’s placement on the 15-day IL, with righty Trent Thornton recalled to take his place on the active roster.
Aug 6: The Blue Jays announced that reliever Tim Mayza dislocated his right shoulder during a play in tonight’s 7-3 loss to the Twins. In the sixth inning, Sandy Leon bunted in front of the mound and Mayza grabbed at the ball to try and tag Nick Gordon, who was running from third base. Mayza missed the ball and Gordon slid into his outstretched arm, leaving Mayza in obvious pain before he was naturally removed from the game.
Mayza will certainly be placed on the 15-day injured list, and now the only question is just how long the left-hander could be out of action. Though the injury was to his non-throwing shoulder, the severity of the dislocation could potentially put the rest of Mayza’s season in jeopardy.
Heading into tonight’s game, Mayza had a 2.41 ERA/3.01 SIERA over 33 2/3 innings, missing a month of action due to inflammation in his left forearm. With only a 20.9% strikeout rate, Mayza was relying on grounders (a strong 58.2% groundball rate) and soft contact to get results. While a .277 wOBA that sat well below his .322 xwOBA indicated that Mayza was getting some good fortune, it marked the southpaw’s second consecutive year of quality results since returning from the Tommy John surgery that wiped out his 2020 season.
The Jays added Zach Pop, Anthony Bass, and Mitch White to their pitching mix at the deadline, and yet all of those hurlers are right-handed. That left Mayza as the only left-hander in the Toronto bullpen, though the Blue Jays have done respectably well against left-handed batters this season despite the overload of righty relievers. The Jays relief corps has a cumulative 3.44 ERA (10th-best in baseball) against lefty swingers, as closer Jordan Romano, David Phelps, and particularly Yimi Garcia are all doing very well against the opposite side of the plate.
Still, operating without any lefties at all isn’t ideal for any bullpen, and Mayza’s absence reveals a lack of proven southpaw depth on the organizational depth chart. Tayler Saucedo is on the 60-day IL and has been rehabbing at Triple-A Buffalo since mid-June, plus Matt Gage, Anthony Kay, and Foster Griffin are also at Triple-A and on the 40-man roster.
Left-hander Ricky Tiedemann is Toronto’s top minor league pitcher and has shot up prospect rankings in his first pro season. However, Tiedemann was only just promoted to Double-A, so moving him up to the majors this early in his development (he turns 20 later in August) would perhaps be too risky a move, even for a Jays team in win-now mode.
Looking at the big league roster, Yusei Kikuchi could get some consideration for a bullpen role, assuming Ross Stripling returns from his current IL stint in around the minimum 15 days. If Stripling is healthy and White (currently taking Stripling’s rotation spot) is pitching capably, the Jays could look to shift Kikuchi to relief pitching. A move to the pen could both help the lack of left-handed pitchers, and also help Kikuchi get on track during what has been a difficult first season in Toronto.
Injured List Transactions: Urias, Holderman, Mayza
On yet another injury-filled day in baseball, let’s catch up on a few more comings and goings from the IL…
- The Orioles placed infielder Ramon Urias on the 10-day injured list due to a left oblique strain, and selected Richie Martin‘s contract from Triple-A. With a pretty even split of playing time between shortstop, second base, and third base over his three MLB seasons, Urias has handled the majority of third base duty for the O’s this season, though he hasn’t matched his production from the 2021 season. After posting a 115 wRC+ in 296 PA with Baltimore last year, Urias has a more modest 86 wRC+ and a .225/.273/.387 slash line in 188 PA this season. Tyler Nevin figures to get most of the third base playing time with Urias out, and Martin (called up for his first Major League action of 2022) will likely spell Rougned Odor and Jorge Mateo at the two middle infield positions.
- The Mets placed right-hander Colin Holderman on the 15-day injured list due to a right shoulder impingement. The placement is retroactive to June 8, and righty Jake Reed has been called up from Triple-A to take Holderman’s spot in New York’s bullpen. Pitching in his first MLB season, Holderman has an impressive 3.18 ERA, 30.4% strikeout rate, and 8.7% walk rate in his first 11 1/3 innings as a big leaguer.
- Tim Mayza was activated off the Blue Jays‘ 15-day injured list, as the left-hander returned to action after missing a little under four weeks due to forearm inflammation. After throwing a scoreless two-thirds of an inning today against the Tigers, Mayza improved his ERA to 1.98 over 13 2/3 total frames this season.
Pitching Notes: Kershaw, Wacha, Hernandez, Mayza
There had been some indication that Clayton Kershaw could be cleared to throw a bullpen session today, but Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters (including The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya) that such a session won’t take place. Some right SI joint inflammation sent Kershaw to the 15-day injured list on May 13, and while the star left-hander has started playing catch, it appears he is still some time off from a formal bullpen.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Kershaw will miss an overt amount of time, but as Ardaya notes, it does rule out any chance that Kershaw will miss only a 15-day minimum. While he isn’t dealing with an arm injury this time, Kershaw has dealt with enough health issues in recent years that any sort of IL stint is a concern, though the former three-time NL Cy Young Award winner has continued to pitch very well when he has been able to take the mound.
Here’s the latest on some other pitching-related injury situations from around the league…
- Michael Wacha is slated to return from the 15-day injured list and start Friday’s game, Red Sox manager Alex Cora told MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo and other reporters. Friday is the first eligible day for Wacha’s activation, after being retroactively placed on the 15-day IL on May 5 due to left intercostal irritation. After a few rough seasons, Wacha looked to be on pace for a bounce-back performance in his first five starts with Boston, with an excellent 1.38 ERA over 26 innings.
- At the minor league level, Cora said left-hander Darwinzon Hernandez will be “down for a while” after suffering an MCL sprain in his right knee. Hernandez has a 5.95 ERA over 19 2/3 innings with Triple-A Worcester, continuing his career-long pattern of recording plenty of strikeouts but also far too many walks. Over 78 2/3 career big league frames with the Red Sox, Hernandez has a 3.66 ERA and 33.6% strikeout rate, but also a whopping 17.6% walk rate.
- The Blue Jays placed Tim Mayza on the 15-day IL Monday due to left forearm inflammation, and GM Ross Atkins told MLB.com’s Keegan Matheson and other reporters today that the initial indication is that Mayza’s issue is localized within his forearm and not his elbow. Mayza is seeing another doctor today just to be doubly safe, as the reliever underwent Tommy John surgery in September 2019 and also missed 10 days last season due to elbow inflammation. Since returning from that TJ procedure, Mayza has a 3.14 ERA over 66 innings out of Toronto’s bullpen in 2021-22.
Blue Jays Place Tim Mayza On 10-Day Injured List, Option Ryan Borucki
The Blue Jays placed southpaw Tim Mayza on the 10-day injured list due to left elbow inflammation, the team announced. Left-hander Ryan Borucki was also optioned to Triple-A, and lefty Kirby Snead and right-hander Patrick Murphy were recalled from Triple-A to fill the open two roster spots.
With Mayza now sidelined, The Athletic’s Kaitlyn McGrath notes the somewhat amazing fact that every member of the Jays’ opening day pitching staff has been optioned, released, or placed on the IL at some point this season. Despite zero pitchers who have been effective and healthy for the entire season, the Jays are now just 6.5 games out of first and 2.5 games out of a wild card spot.
Mayza has been that source of reliability out of the pen for the Jays, however, with a 3.75 ERA/3.08 FIP in 36 innings spanning 44 games. He’s particularly effective against same-handed hitters, who are slashing just .207/.246/.207 against him.
Snead, 26, will try to take on some of Mayza’s responsibilities in his absence. Snead has just two big league appearances, though he’s pitched to a 1.89 ERA in 33 1/3 innings in Triple-A this season.
Borucki might have taken on some of that workload, but he’s struggled to a 5.12 ERA/5.18 FIP across 20 outings. He gave up two runs on two hits and a walk in yesterday’s game against the Red Sox.
Murphy, 26, has been a name floating around recently as a guy who could be a difference-maker out of the Jays’ pen. The right-hander owns a microscopic 1.00 ERA in Triple-A across 13 innings of work. He has seven appearances with the big league club, the last one coming on July 28th when he tossed one scoreless inning of relief.
Blue Jays Outright Reese McGuire, Breyvic Valera
TODAY: McGuire and Valera have both cleared DFA waivers and been outrighted to the Blue Jays’ alternate training site, as per a team announcement.
APRIL 1: The Blue Jays announced Thursday morning that catcher Reese McGuire and infielder Breyvic Valera have been designated for assignment. Their roster spots will go to infielder Joe Panik and lefty Tim Mayza, whose contracts have formally been selected.
McGuire, 26, was the 14th overall pick by the Pirates back in 2013 and came to the Jays by way of the 2016 Francisco Liriano trade. The longtime top prospect hit well in 2018-19 (.297/.343/.539, seven homers in 138 plate appearances) before his bat fell off a cliff in 2020 (.073/.073/.146 in 45 plate appearances). That downturn in production, a bizarre and troubling Feb. 2020 arrest, and the breakout of fellow catcher Alejandro Kirk all combined to spell the end of McGuire’s days on Toronto’s 40-man roster.
Valera, meanwhile, has bounced around the league via the waiver wire for the past couple seasons. The Jays have claimed the versatile switch-hitter twice in that time, but he’s still only appeared in five games with the club. The 29-year-old Valera is a career .223/.294/.298 hitter in a small sample of 138 plate appearances, but he carries a much more appealing .302/.374/.442 line through 1550 plate appearances at the Triple-A level.
The Jays told Panik that he’d made the roster last week, marking the second straight season that he’s cracked their big league club after inking a minor league pact in the offseason. Mayza, 29, pitched 104 innings with the Jays from 2017-19 but missed the 2020 season due to Tommy John surgery that he underwent in Sept. 2019. He’s healthy now and rattled off 6 2/3 shutout innings during Spring Training, yielding just one hit and two walks with six punchouts along the way.