Blue Jays non-tender Ryan Goins and Tom Koehler

The Toronto Blue Jays have officially non-tendered contracts to both Ryan Goins and Tom Koehler making both players free agents if they choose not renegotiate with the Jays.

Shi Davidi of Sportsnet broke the news shortly after the 8 pm EST deadline via Twitter.  MLB Trade Rumours had predicted that Tom Koehler would earn $6 million and Ryan Goins $1.8 million through the arbitration process. The Jays obviously felt the money could be better served focussed somewhere else in bettering the club.

Goins is somewhat of an interesting non-tender seeing he was projected to earn below $2 million for the upcoming season however perhaps the acquisition of Gift Ngoepe changed the landscape on the Goins situation.

Last season Goins slashed .237/.286/.356 with a career-high 9 home runs and 62 runs batted in for the Blue Jays in 143 games. His average catapulted to .330 with runners last season but he still only managed to accumulate a -0.2 WAR for the campaign. Goins earned pretty much the league minimum last season taking home $548,200.

By all accounts everyone expected Koehler to be non-tendered with the possibility of working out a new deal for less money. The hurler was effective after being acquired from the Miami Marlins in August making 16 appearances for the Jays.

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He pitched mainly out of the bullpen for 15 of those appearances but posted a tidy 2.65 earned run average whiffing 18 hitters in 17 innings on the bump. Koehler is versatile and could have also been an option to start next season having made 133 career starts with all but one coming for the Miami Marlins.

The Jays obviously felt the price tag was a little too steep for what they were going to receive in return from Koehler.

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There was speculation that Ezequiel Carrera and Aaron Loup could also be non-tender candidates but at the time of this article, nothing has been released so it appears they will remain with the club.