Blue Jays offseason: 5 realistic free agent starters

If you can’t beat them, sign them! Yovani Gallardo has been impossible for the Blue Jays to figure out in the past. Against the Blue Jays, Yovani posts a regular season record of 3-0/19.4IP/3ER. The Blue Jays aren’t the only team Gallardo beats up on, posting a sub-4.00ERA six out of seven seasons he has pitched at least 150 innings. Gallardo will be one of the most steady free agents to hit the market this year, and will certainly gain a lot of attention from teams.

In 2014 with the Texas Rangers, Gallardo would post one his best years to date, pitching 184.1 innings with a 3.42 ERA and 2.5WAR. In the offseason, the righty Gallardo will turn 30 years old, and some indications of wear and tear are starting to pop up in Gallardo’s numbers. In the past four years Gallardo’s K/9 has dropped an average of .88 per year (nearly a strikeout a game) which is huge for a starter who throws a low-90s fastball and has some pretty inefficient off speed pitches. This can be scary for a pitcher known to be susceptible to giving up a lot of home runs. We said the same thing about Mark Buehrle, R.A. Dickey, and Marco Estrada, and they have seemed to handle the somewhat home-run-happy Rogers Centre pretty well.

The Rangers have extended a qualifying offer to Gallardo, which he will most likely decline in the next few days, as he is most likely going to get a great pay check this offseason. Signing for four or five years at twelve/thirteen million a season, due to his age, Gallardo will most likely have a team option attached to that contract. This is a heavy price to pay if you ignore some of the trends that are happening in Gallardo’s numbers but it’s the price you have to pay for consistent starting pitching.

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