5 Blue Jays who won’t finish the month of August on the big league roster

Zach Pop

It has certainly been an unexpectedly rough go for Zach Pop in his past couple of seasons with the Jays. After joining the team at the trade deadline back in 2022, Pop became a key piece of their bullpen puzzle down the stretch. In 17 appearances, he registered a stellar 2-0 record with a 1.89 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, and only 2 walks to go along with 11 strikeouts in 19 innings pitched.

When Pop was determined to continue that success into 2023, he was met with a season riddled with injuries and ineffectiveness. That led to him to posting his career worst numbers in ERA (6.59), walk rate (4.0 per nine innings) and home run rate (2.6 per nine innings). His struggles persisted to a point that he actually ended up finishing the season in the minors, failing to regain his major league roster spot.

This season, Pop began the year at Triple-A Buffalo, but joined the Jays towards the end of April. However, despite a brief solid start to 2024, he has failed yet again to regain his dominant form that he has shown when he first got here. To date, Pop sports an 0-3 record with a 5.24 ERA and 1.31 WHIP while giving up a career-high 7 home runs in just 34.1 innings of work. 

More worrisome was the fact that he had struggled even more recently with an ERA over 5.50 and a WHIP over 1.60 in his past 15 games. In fact, Pop was actually already demoted in mid-July, only to be recalled back at the end of the month with the fallout of the trade deadline. As a result, being one of the bubble players currently on the roster, Pop likely won’t last the entire month of August.