Captain Crunched
Alejandro Kirk's thumb was broken and dislocated by a foul tip on Friday. Brandon Valenzuela is up. PLUS: Brendon Little, Patrick Corbin, Trey Yesavage, Tyler Fitzgerald, and more...
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The Blue Jays lost in the dumbest way possible against the White Sox on Friday, but fortunately we don’t have to talk about the ins and outs of that mess.
What is unfortunate, of course, is the reason why all of that seems so unimportant.
Alejandro Kirk exited Friday’s game in the bottom of the 10th inning, immediately grabbing the thumb of his catching hand after being struck awkwardly by a foul tip. The Jays announced on Saturday that it is a thumb fracture, and that Kirk has been placed on the IL.
Manager John Schneider clarified to reporters in Chicago ahead of Saturday’s action that Kirk’s thumb was also dislocated on the play as well, and that he will visit a specialist in Pennsylvania on Monday to determine whether surgery or a pin in his thumb is needed.
That obviously has to be viewed as considerably worse news that the initial announcement of just a break. A clean break with no other damage is what Victor Martinez, then of the Red Sox, suffered back in 2010, and all it cost him was a month. It seems unlikely that the Jays will have been quite so lucky here.
To be fair to the Jays for a second about this, clearly they weren’t hiding anything with that first announcement, they just needed to make a move to get him onto the injured list and Brandon Valenzuela up and onto the roster. Considering the swelling likely involved, my guess is that it would have been very difficult to ascertain any further damage than the break indicated by the X-ray. That they’re saying there’s no ligament damage as far as they know isn’t exactly comforting at this point.
We’ll know more Monday. As for Kirk’s return, it could be a while. These ever-resilient Jays are about to be tested in a big way.
The Jays have a well-built roster that is already surviving well enough without the services of Trey Yesavage, José Berríos, Shane Bieber, Cody Ponce, Bowden Francis, Yimi García, and Anthony Santander.
But this one hits different.
It goes without saying that Kirk is one of the Blue Jays’ most important players, if not the most important, but I’ll say it anyway. Frankly, he’s one of the most important players on any team in the league.
Kirk was a top 25 position player in baseball by fWAR last season (4.7), the second best catcher in the game by that metric—which, frankly, probably doesn’t fully capture a catcher’s impact on the pitching staff, as a leader, etc. Even in an off year at the plate in 2024 he was worth nearly three wins, despite coming to the plate just 348 times.
To get the kind of above average offence out of him as they did last season, while also getting elite, best-of-the-best, 100th percentile defence? That is damn close to irreplaceable, especially considering just how few genuine, every day big league catchers actually exist.
But replace him the Jays must, for the near term, and likely for a good chunk of the season. It’s a blow to a team that was already in a tough division, with razor thin margin for error, that has already pissed away a couple of winnable games to bad teams, and that—with an entire five-man starting rotation currently on the IL—has now had to dip into free agency to find a way to soak up some innings, announcing on Friday evening that for some reason they’ve signed 36-year-old lefty Patrick Corbin.
Those losses, and the limp offence so far, and the Patrick Corbin of it all aren’t really major worries, in my estimation. Funny things happen in a baseball season sometimes and it’s important not to lose perspective about them. But losing Kirk is very different. All those stolen strikes, good sequences, crucial blocks, and clutch hits will be badly missed.
But hey, at least whoever replaces Brendon Little will be an improvement, I guess. GOOD LORD, THAT NEEDS TO END.
Thank Goodness for A.J. Preller
Tyler Heineman is, of course, the Blue Jays’ backup catcher and is getting the first crack at playing time in Kirk’s absence—he started here on Saturday. But the more intriguing member of the Jays’ new makeshift tandem behind the plate, I think, is the young Valenzuela.
Brought over in an innocuous-seeming deadline day deal with the Padres last summer, the Jays acquisition of Valenzuela in exchange for Will Wagner feels more and more like theft every time I think of it.
Wagner was, you’ll likely remember, the number three prospect in the king’s ransom the Jays acquired from the Astros for Yusei Kikuchi during their 2024 deadline sell-off. He had a strong finish to that year with the Jays, added a bit of off-season helium after it was learned that he’d been playing on a knee that required surgery, had a solid camp, and then made the Jays’ Opening Day roster last season. There was real optimism there.
But there was also a guy whose warts were fairly easily seen. He lacks power, he lacks a real position, he’s not speedy or especially athletic, not a bat speed guy, and at the time of the trade to San Diego he had already turned 27.
Wagner is a player who really needs to hit to have a role, and he just doesn’t quite look like that guy. Since he turned pro at age 22 he’s played 330 minor league games and taken 1,448 plate appearances as a minor leaguer, which is more than two full 162-game schedules worth, and in that span he’s hit just 30 home runs. Against minor league pitching. As a guy who doesn’t play a premium position.
It’s just a very tough profile to make work.
Meanwhile, speaking of premium positions, we have Valenzuela—a guy who seems to only ever get spoken about in glowing terms by people with a line on how the Blue Jays think.
For example, here’s more from Arden via the piece he cites in the tweet above:
The Blue Jays indeed like plenty about Valenzuela, a switch-hitting, defensively sound catcher with a big arm and quick release. Toronto developers believe they can coax a bit more contact out of his swing without sacrificing the pop Valenzuela has already demonstrated during his short time in the system. The 25-year-old posted a 110-m.p.h. max exit velocity last season and his average exit velocity this spring was second on the Blue Jays to — who else? — Kirk.
Now, I want to be careful not to let anyone get too excited for the bat here, or to act like Padres GM A.J. Preller gave away some sort of a total stud here. The most common type of comments out there about Valenzuela are that he could be a legitimate big league backup catcher for a long time, mostly because of his strong defence. That’s a player with real value, but hardly a sexy one.
Still, he opened eyes with a strong spring, going 7-for-23, with a double, a homer, and three walks. The exit velo stuff is interesting. The switch-hitting is certainly interesting. And to start the year in Buffalo he’s only struck out three times in 17 plate appearances, which is good for anybody, let alone a guy who struck out more than 30% of the time with the Bisons after he arrived last summer.
He is also, it seems, going to see his fair share of playing time in Kirk’s absence.
The big leagues will be a big adjustment for him, and it’s obviously not great that he’s arriving here earlier than the Jays would have ever wanted, and under these circumstances. But a guy to watch, at the very least. And a better piece to have than most alternatives, I think.
The Jays seem to think it as well.
The Corbin of It All…
I don’t think a lot of fans had Patrick Corbin’s name on their mind when reports, like this one from Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet, began surfacing in recent days that the Jays were in serious talks about adding a free agent starter. This is, after all, a guy who most people likely remember pitching to a brutal 5.71 ERA (!) over nearly 700 innings with the Nationals from 2021 through 2024.
Durable? Check. But only able to show it because they were paying him too much to cut bait.
But the move makes at least a little bit more sense in this than maybe appears on the surface.
For one thing, Corbin had his best season since 2019 by ERA, xERA, FIP, xFIP, fWAR, K/9, HR/9, and probably a whole lot of other things, as a member of the Texas Rangers last year. He wasn’t good—these were all low bars to cross—but with a 4.40 ERA he wasn’t killing you, and he was able to take the ball for 30 starts, like he always does.
The durability is a real thing here, I think. The Jays obviously aren’t going to be asking him to make a bunch of starts, but they will at least be able to feel confident he’ll take the ball when they do need him to.
Another factor is that Corbin has continued to pitch despite being without a team. He’s reportedly already up to 75 pitches, and is already slated to take the hill today in Dunedin.
And apparently one more factor still was a glowing review from a certain former teammate…
Good enough for me! And that’s especially true because it genuinely doesn’t seem as though Trey Yesavage is far off now.
He’s maybe not as close as the theoretically possible timeline I wrote about on Friday, but he threw 44 pitches for Dunedin on Friday, and everything looked pretty good in terms of velocity (slightly down), swing-and-miss on the slider, pitch shape (mostly, though the splitter was producing some different values than previously, though we’re only taking there about a seven-pitch sample), and results. Over 2 2/3 innings he allowed just one run on one hit (a home run), with just a single walk and three strikeouts.
Maybe more importantly, given the nature of the injury he’s been dealing with, his release points looked pretty much exactly like you’d want. (Friday’s start on the left, 2025 in the big leagues on the right).
Just one more thing…
The Jays announced mid-game here on Saturday that they’ve acquired infielder Tyler Fitzgerald from the Giants for cash considerations and immediately optioned him to Buffalo.
A real story in San Francisco back in 2024, when out of nowhere he blasted 15 home runs in 96 games, powering himself to a 132 wRC+ (albeit with a .380 BABIP) and 3.0 fWAR, Fitzgerald has struggled ever since to repeat that success. Thanks to a .72 wRC+ over 72 games in 2025, he’s been bannished to the minors since last August, and was designated for assignment by the Giants earlier this week.
A 2B/SS who hasn’t had the greatest Statcast numbers at short (though in a sub-600 inning sample), Fitzgerald also has some experience in the outfield.
Nothing terribly impressive to see here, but maybe there’s a chance for the Jays to get him back to that magical 2024 form. In the very likely event that they don’t, he’s optionable infield depth—something the Jays were lacking since losing Leo Jiménez.
Meh. No harm, no foul.
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thank god for ketamine
Sadly, the value of Kirk was vividly demonstrated today in a bad way, given Tyler Heineman's bone-headed base running mistake, along with the throwing error that cost the Jays 2 runs in the 8th. To say nothing of yesterday's throwing error that cost the Jays a victory. I hope Valenzuela's promising spring training portends real promise for him in the bigs because Heineman is a serious liability.
Speaking of liabilities, for the love of God, please no more Brendan Little! At a minimum, send him down to Buffalo and see if he can regain some confidence. As a short-term measure, bring in Patrick Corbin and use him out of the bullpen as another southpaw option. And hope that Ricky Tiedemann can give you something there if and when he returns to full health.