- The Blue Jays have agreed to a minor-league deal with left-handed pitcher Buddy Boshers, tweets Scott Mitchell of TSN. Boshers, who formerly pitched in the bigs with the Angels and Twins, is the owner of a 4.59 ERA in 86 1/3 career innings. He spent last season toiling in Triple-A with the Astros and Pirates organizations, posting a 3.32 ERA. Per Mitchell, the 31-year-old has has been pitching in the Mexican League; however, he’ll now return to affiliated ball, joining the Jays’ Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo.
Blue Jays Rumors
Latest On Clay Buchholz, Devon Travis, Ryan Borucki
Blue Jays right-hander Clay Buchholz went to the injured list May 10 with a shoulder injury, but a back problem could keep him out for a while longer. Buchholz is dealing with a Grade 2 strain of his teres major, per MLB.com’s Gregor Chisholm, who adds that the hurler will see famed orthopedist Dr. James Andrews early next week for a second opinion. Assuming the initial diagnosis holds up, Buchholz could stay on the shelf for a “significant” amount of time, Chisholm writes.
This is the latest negative turn in what has been a forgettable Blue Jays tenure for Buchholz, who parlayed a bounce-back 2018 with Arizona into a $3MM guarantee from Toronto this past March. An elbow issue kept Buchholz from making his season debut until April 13, however, and though he performed well in his first start with the Jays, his overall production has left plenty to be desired. Buchholz has averaged fewer than five innings during his five appearances and logged a disastrous 6.57 ERA/5.51 FIP with a career-low 4.38 K/9 and personal-worst velocity.
The 34-year-old Buchholz hasn’t been the picture of durability throughout his career, nor has teammate Devon Travis. The oft-injured second baseman, who underwent left knee surgery March 17 and hasn’t played this year, has suffered a setback and is without a timetable to return, Chisholm reports. Travis’ knee doesn’t have any structural damage, but he did undergo a platelet-rich plasma injection to tamp down inflammation.
Travis, 28, looked like a legitimate building block for Toronto during an excellent rookie showing in 2015. However, a series of lower body injuries and a decline in production have torpedoed Travis’ career since then and limited him to 254 of a possible 531 games.
In further unfortunate news for Toronto, injured lefty Ryan Borucki may not make his 2019 debut until mid- to late June, Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet tweets. Borucki has recovered slowly from an elbow ailment that surfaced toward the end of March and was only supposed to keep him out for a small amount of regular-season time. Two months later, though, the 25-year-old Borucki hasn’t yet gotten the opportunity to build on a solid rookie campaign in which he managed a 3.87 ERA/3.80 FIP with 1.6 fWAR over 97 2/3 innings and 17 starts.
Blue Jays Select Contract Of Ryan Feierabend, DFA Javy Guerra
The Blue Jays selected the contract of southpaw Ryan Feierabend, manager Charlie Montoyo tells reporters including Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet.ca (Twitter links). Javy Guerra is the roster casualty, per Ben Nicholson-Smith of sportsnet.ca (via Twitter).
Feierabend makes for quite a story. The 33-year-old last appeared in the majors — or in the affiliated ranks — in the 2014 season. Since his debut way back in 2006, Feierabend owns a 7.15 ERA in 113 1/3 innings at the game’s highest level.
In the intervening years, Feierabend has plied his trade in Korea. In four campaigns there, he worked to a 4.21 ERA with 7.2 K/9 and 2.3 BB/9 over 793 1/3 innings. In 16 2/3 innings this year at Triple-A Buffalo, Feierabend has allowed five earned runs on 15 hits (three of them home runs) with a 13:6 K/BB ratio.
It’s always interesting to see a pitcher make it back to the majors after a long layoff. Better still, in this case the hurler in question sports a rare left-handed knuckler.
Guerra, 33, gets the tough luck DFA after 11 outings with the Blue Jays. Per Nicholson-Smith, Guerra asked to eat innings when he sensed a roster move might be near. It’s both a savvy and gracious move on Guerra’s part, as his scoreless three-inning appearance yesterday helped save the arms of the rest of the pen while getting himself one last chunky appearance before the ax.
He pitched well for the Jays outside of a rough two-game patch versus Tampa where he was tagged for 5 runs in 1 1/3 innings. Away from the Rays, Guerra gave up just a single earned run in 9 appearances that spanned 12 2/3 innings. For his career, the former Dodger draft pick is 8-11 in 212 appearances out of the pen with 32 saves and a 3.44 ERA.
Blue Jays Starter Aaron Sanchez Leaves Start With Blister
10:50pm: Thankfully, it sounds as if the initial outlook is fairly positive. The hope is that Sanchez will be ready for his next star, Chisholm tweets.
9:08pm: Blue Jays righty Aaron Sanchez was pulled from tonight’s outing with a blister, the team announced to reporters including MLB.com’s Gregor Chisholm (via Twitter).
While the outlook isn’t yet known, and finger blisters aren’t necessarily devastating injuries, it’s a particularly concerning development for this particular hurler. Sanchez has missed extensive time dealing with finger problems in recent seasons.
Entering today’s game, Sanchez had turned in 48 innings of 3.75 ERA pitching over nine starts. The 26-year-old has generated a solid number of grounders and boosted his swinging-strike rate to a career-high 9.9% this year. He has also doled out five free passes per nine since the start of the 2018 season and rates as a prime regression candidate.
It’s tough news for the organization as well as the player. Sanchez, who’s earning $3.9MM this year in his second-to-last season of arbitration eligibility, could be a trade or extension candidate if in top form. Instead, this injury adds to the question marks in the pitching department. The Jays already brought in Edwin Jackson to help fill out innings and may again be forced to seek outside help.
Latest On Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
- The Blue Jays have gotten little from their outfielders this season, though reinforcements could be on the way in the form of Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Sportsnet.ca’s Shi Davidi checks in on Gurriel’s development as a utilityman, after Gurriel was sent to Triple-A in mid-April following some rough defensive showings at second base. While Gurriel has continued to see a lot of time (10 games) as a second baseman at Triple-A, he has also been moved around to shortstop and left field. The latter position seems like Gurriel’s clearest route to playing time with the Jays, as the veteran combo of Freddy Galvis and Eric Sogard have performed well as Toronto’s middle infield duo, plus Brandon Drury and (when healthy) Devon Travis will be in the second base mix.
Blue Jays Option Teoscar Hernandez, Outright Socrates Brito
The Blue Jays announced Thursday that outfielder Teoscar Hernandez has been optioned to Triple-A Buffalo and that fellow outfielder Socrates Brito cleared waivers and has been assigned outright to Buffalo following his recent DFA. Infielder Richard Urena is up from Triple-A in place of Hernandez.
Toronto has held high hopes for Hernandez since acquiring him from the Astros back in 2017, but while he’s shown flashes of his potential, the 26-year-old has yet to establish himself as a consistent producer. Hernandez treated the Jays to about a half season’s worth of production last year, hitting at an impressive .268/.319/.550 pace with 12 homers, 16 doubles and five triples through the season’s first 54 games (238 plate appearances). Hernandez routinely lit up Statcast leaderboards with premium exit velocity readings and hit some prodigious home runs, but he slumped badly in the season’s second half and has seen his quality of contact take a nosedive in 2019.
So far this season, Hernandez is hitting just .189/.262/.299 with a near-30 percent strikeout rate. He’s connected on three home runs but has seen his average exit velocity dip from a hearty 91.8 mph to just 89 mph in 2019. His hard-hit rate, as measured by Statcast, has plummeted from 45.9 percent all the way to 34.9 percent, and he’s seen both his ground-ball and infield-fly rates increase over last season as well.
The endpoint here is arbitrary, but dating back to the middle of last June when his struggles seemingly begun, Hernandez is hitting .206/.279/.366 with a 35.2 percent strikeout rate through 426 plate appearances. That’s a far cry from his encouraging first two and a half months in 2018, and the Jays will hope that some time against lesser competition in a lower-pressure setting can get Hernandez back on track. If he can rebound, there’s still room for him to be a long-term option in the outfield or at designated hitter, but he’ll need to pare back the strikeouts and rediscover the frequent hard contact he made last season when he was in the 97th percentile of all big league hitters in terms of barreled-ball rate.
Brito, meanwhile, was designated for assignment last week after hitting just .077/.163/.128 in 43 plate appearances with the Jays. He’s already bounced from the D-backs to the Padres to the Blue Jays in a series of DFAs, but he went unclaimed this time around and will join Hernandez in attempting to get back on track in Triple-A.
Blue Jays Claim Jimmy Cordero
The Blue Jays have claimed righty Jimmy Cordero off waivers from the Nationals, as Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet.ca was among those to cover on Twitter. Cordero was sent to Triple-A on optional assignment.
Despite the Nats’ bullpen malaise, other teams are interested in their relievers that have failed to receive MLB looks this year. Cordero follows Austin Adams (traded to the Mariners) in landing on another 40-man roster after being dropped from the D.C. list. Even as it deals with a struggling pitching staff, the Nationals have been forced to make some tough choices to address injuries to its position-player group.
Cordero will also hope also to follow Adams in getting a promotion with his new organization. He wasn’t able to capitalize on a chance last year, recording as many earned runs and walks as strikeouts (a dozen apiece) in 19 frames. No doubt the Jays also noticed that he pumped 98 mph heat and managed an 11.8% swinging-strike rate. Through 12 innings at Triple-A thus far in 2019, Cordero carries a 6.00 ERA with a 17:9 K/BB mix.
Blue Jays Select Edwin Jackson
The Blue Jays have selected the contract of righty Edwin Jackson, per a club announcement. Lefty Thomas Pannone was optioned out to create active roster space, with righty Matt Shoemaker moved to the 60-day injured list for a 40-man spot.
Jackson’s addition to the MLB roster was a foregone conclusion when he was acquired recently from the A’s. The veteran hurler had joined the Oakland organization on a minors pact that included an opt-out chance later this month. He was shipped to Toronto to help fill a need for innings on the Jays’ roster and will take the ball this evening.
By making it official, the Blue Jays have now become the 14th MLB team Jackson has appeared with in 16 seasons in the majors. He’s closing in on two thousand career innings with a cumulative 4.60 ERA.
Last year, the 35-year-old pitched to a 3.33 ERA in 92 frames for the A’s, though metrics suggested those results were based in no small part upon some batted ball fortune. Jackson ran up 19 strikeouts but also surrendered four home runs in his 14 2/3 minor-league frames to open the present campaign.
Once Jackson takes hill today, he’ll officially surpass righty Octavio Dotel for the all-time lead in number of Major League teams pitched for. The most well-traveled veteran in the game’s history has appeared for the Rays, Cubs, Dodgers, Nationals, White Sox, Diamondbacks, Cardinals, Braves, Athletics, Padres, Orioles, Marlins and Tigers prior to the 2019 season. And while he’ll make his Toronto debut this afternoon, Jackson has technically even been a Blue Jay in the past; he was traded from the White Sox to the Jays on July 27 but immediately flipped to the Cardinals just hours later.
Blue Jays Acquire Edwin Jackson
5:23pm: Jackson’s minor league contract included an end-of-May opt-out clause, which played a role in the A’s decision to trade him, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle tweets. Slusser adds that it looks “more than likely” the cash in this deal will cover what the Athletics paid Jackson on his minors pact this season.
2:37pm: Per a team release, the Blue Jays have acquired righty Edwin Jackson from the A’s for cash considerations. It’ll be the staggering 14th career organization for the 35-year-old Jackson, who’d been pitching for Triple-A Las Vegas since he was signed by the club a few weeks ago.
Jackson enjoyed something of a renaissance with Oakland last season, posting a 3.33 ERA in 92 IP (17 starts) for the club. Teams were presumably put off by his ugly 115 xFIP-, though – just a slight uptick from his baseline established between 2014-18 – and he didn’t catch on with a club until April 12 of this season.
Blue Jays starters have done better than anticipated this season, though the unit’s dealt with a rash of injuries of late. Matt Shoemaker is out for the year after tearing his ACL in a base running incident, and righty Clay Buchholz is again on the shelf with an ailment of his own. Jackson may indeed find his way to Toronto immediately, where he should be afforded ample opportunity to see if his newfound run prevention is sustainable.
Marlins To Select Contract Of Harold Ramirez
The Marlins will select the contract of outfielder Harold Ramirez, according to Craig Mish of MLB Network Radio on Sirius XM (Twitter link). The corresponding move and precise timing isn’t yet known.
Ramirez, now 24, once owned a 40-man roster spot with the Pirates and Blue Jays but never made it onto the active roster before being outrighted. He was a widely pursued minor-league free agent this winter after a solid effort last year at Double-A. Ramirez followed that with a strong showing in the Venezuelan Winter League and has kept the good vibes going since.
Ramirez elected not to opt out of his deal with the club this spring despite not making the active roster. There’s little reason for the Fish not to give Ramirez a look at this point. After turning in 120 plate appearances of .355/.408/.591 hitting at Triple-A, Ramirez is an easy choice for a club that is receiving next to nothing from its outfield unit.
