Yariel

Rodriguez

The Jays knew they could get away with taking Rodríguez off the 40-man over the winter, but that doesn’t mean they were ruling him out as a contributor. Today, though, he didn’t look like someone who was ready to compete for a spot. He averaged 92.6 mph with his fastball, which is down three mph from last year, and throwing out the six balls in play against him, only five of his remaining 20 pitches were strikes. He was unlucky to give up five hits on the quality of contact against him — just one of the six balls in play was hard hit — but he didn’t resemble a major leaguer.

Rodríguez, who is owed $17 million over the next three years, passed through waivers unclaimed after being removed from the club’s 40-man roster to make room for Cody Ponce. He was a key component of Toronto’s bullpen last season, recording a solid 3.08 ERA (4.40 FIP), 1.15 WHIP and 66/34 K/BB ratio across 73 innings of work over 73 appearances. The 28-year-old righty signed a four-year, $26 million contract with the Blue Jays prior to the 2024 season and was eventually moved to a full-time relief role after struggling to an inflated 4.47 ERA across 86 2/3 innings over 21 starts in his debut. He’ll compete for a spot in Toronto’s bullpen during spring training.

The 27-year-old has been shelved since early September due to a left knee sprain. It sounds like he’s still not 100 percent and it’ll be interesting to see how he’s deployed — whether it’s strictly as a designated hitter or if the Jays will slide him over to second base — but it sounds like they’ll have his bat at their disposal as they kick off the Fall Classic on Friday night against the Dodgers. Ty France was also added to the Jays’ roster for the World Series while Joey Loperfido and Yariel Rodriguez were removed.

The 28-year-old needed only seven pitches to get three outs, even though only three of those pitches were for strikes. This is Rodriguez’s second save of the season, and came with Jeff Hoffman unavailable on Sunday after throwing on back-to-back days coming out of the All-Star break. It’s nice to have confirmation that Rodriguez would be next in line if anything happened to Hoffman, but that’s all he is for now.

Hoffman worked around Jasson Domínguez’s double with one out, though things were a whole lot less urgent for Hoffman after the Jays upped their lead from one run to three in the bottom of the eighth. The appearance tonight was Hoffman’s fourth in five days, so he should get Friday off. Yimi García and Yariel Rodríguez will divvy up late-inning duties if the Jays have a lead.

Rodríguez got a pop fly, a groundout and a strikeout to end it and lowered his ERA to 2.97 in the process. Hoffman, who had pitched four of the previous five days, will be ready to go Friday after the Jays’ off day Thursday.

Rodríguez took the ball to kick off a bullpen game for Toronto and was involved in a handful of bizarre moments during an eventful opening frame, which included Jarren Duran getting thrown out at home on Rafael Devers’ double to right field and Devers crossing the plate on a balk immediately after a wild pitch. He also served up a solo homer to Alex Bregman, just for good measure. The 28-year-old righty holds an underwhelming 5.68 ERA, 1.50 WHIP and 10/7 K/BB ratio across 12 2/3 innings (11 appearances, one start).

Rodriguez, 28, will get the nod and go a couple of innings — at most — before giving way to Eric Lauer. It’s an obvious point that will be repeated anyway, but an opener doesn’t offer any sort of fantasy significance with zero chance of a win and no opportunity to pick up innings.

The Blue Jays definitely are not acting like they intend to return Rodríguez to the rotation with Max Scherzer out; he’s pitched exactly one inning in each of his three appearances to date. Easton Lucas will be getting the start in Scherzer’s place on Wednesday.

It was interesting that the Blue Jays never treated Rodríguez as a reliever in spring training, even though it was always expected he’d be in the pen unless someone in the rotation got hurt. Of course, the Jays did want to keep him stretched out in case something happened, but coming out of the pen is something he hadn’t done since he was a setup man in Japan in 2022. He might continue to struggle some while getting used to relief work again.