Jays sign reliever Kirby Yates
The 2019 National League All-Star, MLB saves leader, and all-around strikeout machine is coming to Toronto (and so is Chubbs!)
Normally it's not an occasion for a fan base to rejoice when their team signs a pitcher who posted a 12.46 ERA the year prior before being shut down with an elbow issue. But it's also not every day that your team signs a talent like Kirby Yates, either.
The surgery that Yates had in August went well, removing a pair of bone chips in his throwing-elbow — a relief to Yates, who had been experiencing progressively worse pain in the elbow as “summer camp” then the season went on.
“(The doctor) really, really liked the way my elbow looked as a whole. That’s a positive for me,” he told the Times of San Diego in August. “You know, you go in there, 14 years off a Tommy John, you’re, you know a little nervous about what they see, what they might find.”
Yates needed eight weeks off, and unfortunately for him, the Padres didn’t go deep enough into the playoffs for him to be a factor. His season ended after just 4 1/3 innings, and that ugly ERA.
That’s the bad stuff out of the way. And, really, it’s not that bad.
The good stuff, as anyone with even a passing familiarity with Yates’ body of work over his previous years in San Diego, is seriously good.
In 2019, Yates led the majors with 41 saves and was second to only Milwaukee's Josh Hader and the Rays' Nick Anderson among qualified relievers with a 41.6% strikeout rate. Not only was he ridiculously difficult to hit, he also ranked 17th among 158 qualified relievers in terms of walk rate, too. He walked just 13 batters over 60 2/3 innings in 2019, striking out 101. And while that was the season that Liam Hendriks had the best reliever year by fWAR since Éric Gagné, producing 3.8 wins, Yates was hardly far behind him, producing 3.4 WAR over 22 1/3 fewer innings.
That season was not exactly par for the course for Yates, but he was plenty excellent in 2018 and 2017 as well. If he gets back to full health — and yes, that’s still a big if at this point — he will be an absolute weapon for the Jays at the back of the bullpen.
Formerly a member of the Rays, the Yankees, and the Angels, Yates will return to the American League as quite a different pitcher than when he left in mid-2017. Yates started throwing a splitter in San Diego, throwing only it and his fastball in over the last three years, having ditched all three of the slider, changeup, and curve that he threw during his first AL stint.
That splitter? Oh, it's excellent. In May 2019, a Beyond the Box Score piece that chronicled Yates’ evolution into a fastball-splitter guy called it perfect. And it inspired the following YouTube video — a fourteen minute supercut of absolutely filthy offerings.
I mean, you can only look at a thing like this and giddily laugh.
The addition of Yates makes the Jays’ collection of bat-missing relievers look like pretty damned formidable. There’s him, there’s Jordan Romano, there’s Rafael Dolis, there’s Ryan Borucki. There’s Julian Merryweather, who is out of options, so can’t be sent to Buffalo as a depth starter. There’s the club’s other new addition, Tyler Chatwood, who was signed last night to bring his 99 mph heat to a relief role. There’s even a guy named Shun Yamaguchi, who struck out more than a batter per nine innings last season — but we’re not ready for that conversation yet.
And we haven’t even talked yet about Yates’ secret weapon. His bulldog Chubbs!
Chubbs is a star, and Yates has a real chance to go back to being great. We don’t know, at the time of this writing, just what the contract he’s signed will look like, but in all likelihood I’d think it will be a one-year deal with a relatively low base and some serious incentives based on his performance. Assuming his surgeon’s positivity about his elbow back in August was for real, it seems to me like an excellent bet.
This also, of course, means that yet another player has chosen to take the Blue Jays’ money. The uncertainty about where the team will play didn’t deter him. The fact that the team plays in Canada didn’t deter him. The Jays’ money was just as good as anybody else’s.
That’s a huge thing about it, too.
Now everybody take a deep breath, think about that, and then think about just how many players are still out there to be signed who could help this team immensely. The Blue Jays are in a very good place right now, and — holy shit — it’s finally actually starting to feel that way, isn’t it?
Top image via Twitter/@KauaiKirby39
You must be busy tonight Andrew!
One year and $8.25 million. I was expecting quite a bit more for him.