Better know your Blue Jays 40-man: Mike Bolsinger

Mike Bolsinger is a 29 year old right-handed pitcher, who we picked up in trade from the Dodgers for Jesse Chavez. Chavez had worn out his welcome in Toronto and Bolsinger....well, he had made 6 starts, for the Dodgers, and had a 6.83 ERA, making the Dodgers happy to give him up.

Mike had a 3.62 ERA in 21 starts in 2015, as a Dodger, so one could imagine there was some talent there.

After the trade, Bolsinger was sent to Buffalo, and made 6 more starts there, posting a 6.08 ERA. In 25.1 innings he allowed 11 walks and had 27 strikeouts. I tend to like pitchers how strike out more than a batter an inning, but then it is bad luck for a pitcher to have an ERA north of 6.

Fangraphs shows him throwing his fastball at 87.8 mph. He also threw a slider (79.6 mph) and a curve (78.9 mph).

The question for Bolsinger is:

Is there any chance he makes the team out of spring training?

I would think there is almost no chance he makes the team, unless we are beset by injuries. I think he would have to have a pretty amazing spring training to have any hope.

Without a number of injuries, his only chance to make the team is as part of the bullpen and it looks to me that we have a dozen or so better candidates for the pen.

And, of course, he is out of options. If he doesn’t make the team, we’d have to get him through waivers. If they put him on waivers at the end of spring training, when several others are on the waiver wire, I think the odds are fairly good that no one would pick him up.

He might not make it make it to spring training, the Jays need a couple of spots on the 40-man for JP Howell and Joe Smith, it’s more than possible that Bolsinger would be one of the ones removed to make room.

I better post this quick, the Jays just made the Howell signing official, someone will be dropped from the 40-man.