{"id":43087,"date":"2021-01-19T17:44:11","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T22:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=43087"},"modified":"2021-01-19T17:51:51","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T22:51:51","slug":"toronto-blue-jays-add-kirby-yates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2021\/01\/19\/toronto-blue-jays-add-kirby-yates\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto Blue Jays Add Kirby Yates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/category\/bluejays\/\" target=\"_self\">Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> have bolstered their bullpen with former All-Star <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/y\/yateski01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kirby Yates<\/a><\/strong>. The 33-year-old pitcher is one of the better relievers left on the free agent market despite a quiet 2020.\u00a0 He joins a team that is eager to compete. Ken Rosenthal of <em>the Athletic <\/em>announced the signing Tuesday evening on Twitter. The deal is pending a physical, which Yates took earlier Tuesday in Florida. Although the results are not yet known, the belief is that it went well.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Free-agent reliever Kirby Yates is in agreement with the Blue Jays, a source tells The Athletic.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal\/status\/1351658074474491904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 19, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Blue Jays Add Kirby Yates<\/h2>\n<p>Yates has been one of the best relievers in baseball for much of his career, but 2020 wasn&#8217;t particularly notable. He threw 4 1\/3 innings for the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/category\/padres\/\" target=\"_self\">San Diego Padres<\/a> with a 12.46 ERA, eight strikeouts and four walks. It&#8217;s obviously too small to say much, but the Blue Jays will keep a close eye on some peripherals. A 16% walk rate was the highest of Yates&#8217; career and he threw his highest percentage of pitches inside the strike zone since 2017. He has been a great pitcher, but he&#8217;s at an age where some people will just fall apart.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/category\/redsox\/\" target=\"_self\">Boston Red Sox<\/a> originally drafted Yates in the 26th round of the 2005 Amateur Draft out of a Hawaiian high school, but he did not sign with them. The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/category\/rays\/\" target=\"_self\">Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> scooped him up and turned him into a fine pitcher at times but posted a 5.27 ERA across 56 1\/3 uneven innings; the ERA was below 4.00 in 2014, but almost 8.00 in 2015. Yates eventually found traction with the Padres thanks to a waiver claim. Even when counting 2020, he has a 2.55 ERA and 286 strikeouts in just 183 2\/3 innings. 2019 was especially dominant. That is the year Yates threw 60 2\/3 innings, struck out 101 batters, and had a 1.19 ERA. He received down-ballot Cy Young support despite having less than half of the innings of any other vote-getter. That is the Yates that Toronto wants in 2021.<\/p>\n<h3>Yates&#8217; Role as a Blue Jay<\/h3>\n<p>Yates could compete to act as Toronto&#8217;s closer. He has saved just 57 games out of 291 appearances, but has enough experience to merit consideration. At the very least, he should boost a Blue Jays bullpen that posted a respectable 1.8 WAR in 2020. That was good for 11th in baseball. The AL East division is wide-open right now, so an addition of Yates&#8217; caliber could be just what Toronto needs to get back in the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: <a id=\"fpIemtz0QHhVJDHvxqgstA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/850443998\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'fpIemtz0QHhVJDHvxqgstA',sig:'zxrV3ucDr3FTjou8AEeLw5BBZgkpApAsYPKJwfcKC3w=',w:'594px',h:'416px',items:'850443998',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Toronto Blue Jays have bolstered their bullpen with former All-Star Kirby Yates. The 33-year-old pitcher is one of the better relievers left on the free agent market despite a quiet 2020.\u00a0 He joins a team that is eager to compete. Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic announced the signing Tuesday evening on Twitter. The deal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3127,"featured_media":43100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1071,35],"tags":[2845,36],"class_list":["post-43087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bluejays","category-mlb","category-news","tag-kirby-yates","tag-toronto-blue-jays"],"modified_by":"DJ Kleinbard","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}