Better know your Blue Jays 40-man: Wilmer Font

Wilmer Font is a 29-year-old, right-handed pitcher from Venezuela. The Blue Jays picked him up from the Mets for cash (or cash considerations, whatever that means) back in June of last year when we were looking for anyone who could throw a baseball.

Wilmer (I’m pretty sure I’ve never met anyone named Wilmer in my life, but he’s one of 3 Wilmers played in the MLB last year. A Baseball Reference search shows only those 3 Wilmers in MLB history) pitched in 23 games for us, making 14 “starts”, working as the opener. He wasn’t bad. He had a 3.66 ERA. In 39.1 innings he allowed 34 hits, 7 home runs, 11 walks, and 53 strikeouts. Batters hit .230/.284/.469 against him.

I guess it is worth noting that the Blue Jays were 9-5 in games he opened. It might be a small sample size thing, but it would be pretty hard to find a random 14 game sample where the Jays had a 64% in rate. Career he has a 5.32 ERA in 75 games spread over 5 seasons, which is why we could pick him up for free.

Font throws hard, he averaged 94.3 MPH on his fastball. He also threw a curve, splitter, change, and slider. PECOTA figures him to pitch 53 innings this year with a 3.97 ERA. Personally, I think the 53 innings sounds high, but Charlie seemed to like him last year. Behind Ken Giles, the bullpen is an open competition this spring. Any of 20 guys could make the bullpen.

I haven’t seen anything said about him this spring.