Blue Jays sign former Diamondbacks All-Star southpaw to add necessary bullpen depth

The Toronto Blue Jays are dealing with a handful of injuries in their major league bullpen and needed to look elsewhere to find depth. After going with Tommy Nance to replace Ryan Burr, their need in the bullpen was truly exposed as a possible trade avenue. Before the trade frenzy begins, Toronto decided to bring in Joe Mantiply on a minor league deal.

Mantiply has spent the majority of his career with Arizona and represented them in the 2022 All-Star Game. Since then the funky southpaw has not been able to find consistency in the big leagues and was released from the Diamondbacks. Prior to being let go, Mantiply allowed 17 earned runs in just 9.2 innings.

Blue Jays sign former Diamondbacks All-Star Joe Mantiply to a minor league contract.

Obviously stats like that will raise some concerns from a team in first place trying to clinch a playoff spot following the break, but there are some reasons to believe in him to turn things around in the organization. Reason number one is the story of Eric Lauer completely turning things around in Toronto's starting rotation.

Obviously these two aren't the same players, yet they are similarly soft tossing left handers. Mantiply won't be in the rotation like Lauer, but the success coming from Lauer shows that this organization can help these soft tossing southpaws find success

Additionally, he is coming off a decent 2024 season. In that year, Mantiply generated an incredbile 38.5% chase rate and a 27.5% whiff rate. His groundball rate of 54.1% was also a great factor in his success that generated a 3.92 ERA.

The problem he encountered this year was giving up too much hard contact, specifically at a 34.8% clip, while his groundball rate fell to 45.7%. Getting groundballs was what got him outs and since he wasn't able to effectively do so this season, he struggled. Now that he is in Toronto, he gets a great opportunity to reset and start over. The veteran needs to find himself and could be a valuable asset towards a postseason push.

He will begin his Blue Jays career with a stint in the Florida Complex League before likely joining the Triple-A squad in Buffalo. Hopefully Mantiply can regain his All-Star self and contribute towards more dependability in the Toronto bullpen.