Better Know Your Blue Jays 40-man: Tim Mayza

Tim Mayza is a 31-year-old lefty reliever. He was our 12th-round pick in 2013. It seems like forever ago. For context In the first ten rounds, we took Phil Bickford, Clinton Hollon, Patrick Murphy, Evan Smith, Dan Lietz, Matt Boyd, Conner Greene, Kendall Graveman, Chad Girodo and Garrett Custons.

Bickford, Boyd, Graveman and Murphy joined Mayza as the only three who played in the majors this past season. But then Danny Jansen was our 16th-round pick.

Tim is a favourite of mine. He was very good in OOTP Baseball, and, well, if I like them in the game, I tend to like them in real life.

After hanging out at the back of our 40-man prospect list for a bit, it made it to the Jays in August 2017. He wasn’t an immediate success, putting up a 6.88 ERA in 19 appearances.

Since then, things have gone much better for him. Well, if you ignore him missing out on the 2020 season after Tommy John surgery. And if you ignore the 4.91 ERA in 2019 he’s been very consistent. In his other three seasons, he’s had an ERA of 3.28, 3.40 and 3.14.

He has pitched 248 games in his career, with a 3.98 ERA and 57 holds. It would be kind of cool to be able to say ‘Mayza is sixth in team history in holds. But no one keeps track of those things (but he is 20th in appearances for Jays pitchers). Mayza isn’t number 1 in career holds, Paul Quantril has 86,Jason Frasor has 83 as a Blue Jay, and Duane Ward has 67 as Blue Jays (I didn’t check further).

Last year was your typical Mayza season. 63 games, 3.14 ERA, 8 vultured wins, and 17 holds (and 3 blown saves). Batters hit .237/.287/.401 with 7 home runs against him. Too many home runs (and it will likely be worse this year). As always, he was much much better against LHB (.162/.205/.297) than RHB (.291/.342/.476). We were better off when we could use him as a LOOGY.

He throws mostly sinkers (82.5% of the time), with the occasional slider (17.4%). He throws the sinker hard (averaging 93.7 MPH). The four-seam fastball has disappeared in the last couple of seasons.

He was a straight one-inning guy last year, pitching more than an inning just four times all season, never getting more than five outs. He faced 3 or fewer batters 44 times in his 63 appearances, but then he was tied for third on the team in appearances. And he mostly pitched in the seventh or eighth innings. That might change this year with the additions in the pen.

With Matt Gage released, Tim is the only lefty reliever on our 40-man. Unless they decided Kikuchi is better off in the pen. But then one out lefties aren’t as useful as they used to be.

Steamer has Mayza pitching 57 games, 57 innings, with a 3.54 ERA. Tim’s been so consistent that you have to figure they will be spitting distance from his actual numbers.