Blue Jays Sign Ryan Kalish to Minors Deal

The thing about depth is that it really isn’t ever deep enough. That is true about baseball. The run of a season for a major league club will see them suffer injuries, poor performances, etc. That is why a team needs to build up its depth. When these things happen, they need to call upon that depth to fill in. To that end, a team also has to think about building the roster of its minor league teams.

Today, the Blue Jays made a move that does just that. The club announced that it signed outfielder, Ryan Kalish to a minor league deal with an invite to big league Spring Training. Kalish will be 27 when the season starts. He’ll be a lefty bat for the Buffalo Bisons.

This is an obvious depth move. In parts of 5 seasons, Kalish has accumulated fewer than a season’s worth of at bats. The results have not been overwhelming, either.

–

Next: Are Blue Jays Hedging Bets for 2015?

He has had some success in the minor leagues with a career line of .275/.359/.425. He’s got some pop, hitting for extra base power, when healthy.

The biggest draw to Kalish is his speed and versatility in the outfield. He can play all 3 positions. For a little taste of what he can bring, here’s a clip that some of you may remember. It was talked about for a while at the time.

Kalish missed the 2011 and 2013 seasons with injuries. In 2011, he crashed into a wall that caused him to miss all but the final 8 games of the season. In 2013, he had arthroscopic surgery on his right shoulder to repair a labrum tear. Then, in August of the same year, he had a disc removed from his neck in a cervical fusion surgery. The history of injury and possible upside make him an interesting (read cheap) target for the Blue Jays.

This may not be the type of move Blue Jays fans have been waiting for since the flurry of activity in November. But, we have to remember that Alex anthopoulos not only has to address the big league roster, but with all the wheeling and dealing, he’s left himself with some work to do to replace the AAA guys too. We can expect more of these kinds of deals to pop up along the way. We should take every one of these moves for what they are. Depth. And, as Blue Jays fans know, depth is very important in the run of a season.