Blue Jays must beat out Cubs in latest rumors after Cody Ponce surgery reveal

The Toronto Blue Jays are continuing to struggle in a major way. With their 4-1 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday, the Blue Jays have now lost each of their last six games. Due to this, they now sport a 4-7 record and are fourth in the American League East standings.

With the Blue Jays having incredibly high expectations, their start to the season has certainly been disappointing. Unfortunately for the Blue Jays, they have already been bitten by the injury bug early on this campaign as well. After being carted off the field in his Blue Jays debut and first major-league appearance since 2021, Cody Ponce was hit with some awful injury news.

While speaking to Sportsnet's Arden Zwelling, Blue Jays manager John Schneider shared that Ponce will be undergoing surgery on his sprained ACL and will be out for the next six months. With this, the Blue Jays will be without one of their key starter for a significant chunk of the campaign, if not the whole season.

With Ponce being out long-term, the Blue Jays should move quickly to add another starter. The free-agent market still has a very intriguing starting pitcher available, and the Blue Jays should go toe-to-toe with the Chicago Cubs to try to land him.

Blue Jays have a Cody Ponce replacement, if they can land him before the Cubs do

According to MoccBomb, the Cubs have been engaging in talks with free-agent starting pitcher Lucas Giolito. It is understandable, as the Cubs could use another solid pitcher in their rotation. Yet, with the Blue Jays dealing with serious injury trouble, they should try to land Giolito before the Cubs have the chance.

If the Blue Jays signed Giolito, he would give them another proven veteran pitcher to work with in their rotation. He would be a nice pickup for the bottom half of their rotation, and his stats from this past season with the Boston Red Sox effectively display that.

In 26 games last season for the Red Sox, Giolito had a 10-4 record, a 3.41 ERA, and 121 strikeouts. With numbers like these, the one-time All-Star is exactly the kind of pitcher that the Blue Jays should be taking a chance on while waiting for their reinforcements to return.

The Blue Jays have recently called up former Nationals pitcher Patrick Corbin, who made one start with Dunedin and struck out nine hitters over five innings. The left-hander has not had a tremendous amount of success at the big league level over the last few years, but he played on several really bad Nationals teams that have basically been rebuilding since their World Series win in 2019.

Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if the Blue Jays can beat out the Cubs and land Giolito as well. The Blue Jays current rotation includes Kevin Gausman, Dylan Cease and Eric Lauer, while Max Scherzer is technically still in that mix, although a forearm tendinitis issue flared up on Monday, and is raising some concerns about whether the 41-year-old will be healthy enough to stay in the rotation. So, with the Blue Jays in need of another pitcher, Giolito stands out as one of their best options right now.