Blue Jays add former standout Twins reliever after flameout with Red Sox

The Toronto Blue Jays are continuing to spend the majority of this offseason by beefing up the pitching department, this time taking a flier on a player looking for a bounce back season. According to Ari Alexander of 7News Boston, right-hander Jorge Alcala has agreed to a minor league deal with the Blue Jays with an invite to spring training.

It's a low cost, high reward type of move which the Blue Jays have become known for over the last few years and there are some underlying factors that point to why Toronto thinks Alcala could become an important part of the team down the road.

Blue Jays add former standout Twins reliever after flameout with Red Sox

Alcala spent 2025 playing with three different MLB teams. He started the year with the Minnesota Twins, was traded to Boston in June, and then selected off waivers by the St. Louis Cardinals in August. Between the three teams he pitched in 56 games, accumulating 55 innings and had a good strikeout rate of 10.0 K/9, but an awful 4.9 BB/9 rate and a 1.75 WHIP, with a 6.22 ERA and he also allowed 13 home runs.

It's been a tough couple of years for Alcala who, at one point, was looked at as a staple of the Twins the bullpen. Between 2020 and 2021, he threw 83.2 innings, with a 3.55 ERA and a 27.2% strikeout rate with a 6.5% walk rate. His four-seam fastball during that time averaged 97 mph. But he missed significant time over the next few seasons and pitched just under 20 innings due to various arm issues.

Alcala seemed to be getting back on the right track in 2024 when he got into 54 games and was worth 1.4 bWAR with 58 strikeouts in 58.1 innings pitched and a 1.03 WHIP. But the small issues in 2024 became glaring ones in 2025. In '24 he had a 3.1 BB/9 and allowed eight home runs. Those numbers ballooned this past year, leading to his three city stint.

Alcala is an example of how volatile bullpen arms can be year-to-year and why front offices have so much trepidation in investing major dollars in relief pitchers. But for the Blue Jays, picking up Alcala on a minor league deal could pay off huge down the road.

His four-seam fastball sat at 97.2 mph, which ranks in the 89th percentile and his hard hit rate of 37.6% was in the 71st percentile. Those are good numbers to build off of. If he can control the ball more and bring down his 11.7% walk rate there should be a noticeable improvement on his other numbers. He might have also been a bit unlucky with his xBA sitting at .239 while opponents had a .351 BABIP against him.

Could he improve with better defense behind him? Possibly. The Twins were one of the worst defensive teams by FanGraphs metrics, with a -23 Fielding Run Value and a defensive fWAR of -12.3. However, the two teams he played for afterwards, the Cardinals and the Red Sox, were the fourth and fifth best teams respectively, ranked by fWAR.

The Blue Jays topped the league in those defensive metrics and so it's possible Alcala's numbers improve just based upon who's playing behind him, but he'll also have to find a way to keep the ball in the ball park and limit the balls hit into the gap with his xSLG in 2025 sitting at .424.

While many Blue Jays fans were hoping they would add an elite arm to create some internal competition with incumbent closer Jeff Hoffman, the Blue Jays are also trying to find as many diamond in the rough options in the hopes that one of them rise to the occasion and can get some big outs at some point in 2026.