Every Single 2020 Free Agent the Blue Jays could be Interested in

Brandon Kintzler

Brandon Kintzler is a major league veteran who has been in the big leagues for 11 years already in which he’s spent his whole career as a reliever out of the bullpen.

In 2020, he was the closer of the Marlins where he successfully converted 12 of 14 saves with an ERA of 2.22 and a 2-3 record. He also had the lowest strikeouts per nine (k/9) mark in his career with 5.1.

In 2019 with the Cubs over a full 162 game season, he was3-3 with a 2.68 ERA over 57 innings across 62 appearances. He limited batters to bat .215 off him and also recorded 17 holds.

In his major league career, he has a record of 22-23 with a 3.31 ERA over 454 relief appearances. He has an opponent average of .260 where’s he gotten 313 strikeouts and 440 hits given up in 448.2 innings pitched. He also has 84 career holds and 61 saves in 84 opportunities for a conversion rate of 72.6%.

As you can see from his stats, Kintzler is not good at missing bats. He used his fastball 75.8% of the time in 2020 and averaged just 91.3 MPH with that pitch. Despite not garnering many strikeouts, he has a heavy groundball rate with a career 56.2% of batted balls off him being grounders.

Kintzler has mostly pitched in tight situations in his career as he’s usually seen pitching sometime in the 7th, 8th or 9th inning. The Blue Jays could maybe try and persuade him to come to their team as a middle reliever, but they would also need to improve their infield defence behind him due to his high groundball rate.