Blue Jays: Cimber’s Great, But What’s Next For The Bullpen?

After watching his depleted bullpen hand over countless leads late in games, General Manager Ross Atkins had seen enough and was able to work out a trade to acquire veteran right hander, Adam Cimber from the Miami Marlins.  Cimber, a four year veteran at the big league level is in the midst of a fantastic season, posting a career low 2.88 ERA in 34 ⅓ innings for the Marlins.

Bringing Cimber into the fold is a great start to repairing what has been a dreadful bullpen over the last month.  The Oregon native ranks 19th amongst all relievers with at least 100 batted balls against in barrel percentage (according to Baseball Savant) and is a master at eliminating hard contact.

Cimber immediately improves the Blue Jays bullpen, and gives manager Charlie Montoyo a legitimate arm to pitch before closer Jordan Romano.  There’s no doubt that the relief core is stronger than it was a couple of days ago.  Even though it has been reinforced, more needs to be done if this team is going to make a real push for the playoffs.  A playoff caliber team needs more than just two relievers if it is going to withstand playing meaningful games in September, and hopefully October.

Despite the amount of success Cimber has enjoyed this season, he hasn’t pitched in a ton of leverage situations for the Marlins and may be better suited in a middle relief role.  The Jays need more depth in the back of their bullpen and because of this, they may need to go out and give up a little more prospect capital to acquire an arm that can pitch in high leverage situations, and even close games if necessary.

Thankfully, there is never a shortage of relief options at the deadline and as July 30th roles closer, more and more teams will turn into sellers and look to move on from some of their leverage relievers, in hopes of adding young talent for a future playoff run.

I wanted to break down three potential trade targets that I think would be fantastic additions to follow up the Cimber trade and add to the back end of the bullpen which is still lacking depth.