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

Steve Cishek

Steve Cishek has been in the major leagues back when the Marlins were the “Florida Marlins” as he even played for that team under the moniker for the 2010 and 2011 seasons.

The shortened campaign didn’t help Cishek at all as he had the worst statistical season of his career. He posted a career-worst ERA of 5.40 over 22 games which saw him pitch in 20 innings striking out 21 batters and giving up the same amount of hits for an opponent average of .269.

Other than 2020, he’s had some solid years in the big leagues. Excluding his rookie year which only saw him pitch in three games, he’s had seven seasons where he’s posted an ERA below 3.00 and the best mark he’s ever put up is 2.01 in 2017. From 2016-2018, he limited opposing batters to bat below .200 against him.

Cishek is one of the few sidearm pitchers left in the big leagues, as he’s thrown like that his whole career and has found relative success doing so. What makes him unique is that he rarely throws a fastball as he typically relies on his slider and sinker to get guys out.

As he throws sidearm, he gets the ball on the ground a lot with a career groundball rate of 48.9%.

In his career, he holds a 2.78 ERA with 605 strikeouts over 450 hits in 576 innings pitched given up for an opponent average of .214 across 594 appearances. He has 82 career holds and 132 saves although he hasn’t been a full time closer since 2016.

The Blue Jays could look at bringing him in as a seventh inning guy.