DUNEDIN, Fla. — Thursday morning’s assignment for Anthony Santander, George Springer, and Daulton Varsho — stepping in to provide live batting practice against a pair of Toronto Blue Jays pitchers ramping up to game readiness — was formidable.
First, face Kevin Gausman — a right-hander attacking the heart of the plate with mid-90s heaters and biting splitters whipped over his shoulder.
Next, step in against Ryan Yarbrough — a lefty painting the edges of the zone with five different pitches from the low 70s to mid-80s that he flings side-armed out of his back pocket.
Then try to hit Gausman again. And take on Yarbrough once more after that. It’s hard to say which Blue Jays pitcher received more of an advantage against their teammates from the diametric rotation. It was probably a tie.
“We couldn’t be more different,” Gausman said. “Not a good matchup day for the hitters.”
“Yeah, you’ve always got to try to play the matchups,” Yarbrough added. “I’m definitely not going to complain about pitching behind someone like Gausman. I can come in and show them something completely different.”
With a cap tip to John Cleese, “and now for something completely different” is a fitting way to explain why the Blue Jays brought Yarbrough back for 2025 on a minor-league deal after acquiring him at last summer’s trade deadline from the Los Angeles Dodgers. His funky, deceptive, low-slot mechanics, delivering a wide arsenal of zigging and zagging pitches, serve as a valuable complement to the more conventional looks hitters will see from the rest of Toronto’s bullpen.
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Although ostensibly competing with several other veteran relievers signed to non-roster deals for a spot on the club’s opening day roster, Yarbrough’s the front-runner in that race and will earn a $2 million salary if his contract’s selected. When healthy and in the zone, he’s undoubtedly a major-league-calibre pitcher. And the way he’s spoken about the Blue Jays offering “the best opportunity” this spring hints at the confidence felt by both sides with where things are headed.
Of course, continuing his career with the Blue Jays was always a likely outcome after the 33-year-old showed well for the club down the stretch, pitching to a 2.01 ERA over 31.1 innings, while building strong relationships with Toronto’s coaching and support staff. The two sides stayed in regular contact throughout the off-season while Yarbrough explored free agency. And when it came time for him to make a final decision, it was a stress-free call to return to where fit and opportunity aligned.
“It made a big difference coming back with how much the coaching staff and everyone said, ‘We really enjoyed having you here,’” Yarbrough said. “Just knowing who the people are here, the players, staff, front office. We really enjoyed our time here and it made it easy to come back.”
What made Yarbrough so effective with the Blue Jays late last season? Well, he featured MLB’s third-lowest average fastball velocity from its 25th-lowest average arm angle. He threw the game’s second-slowest curveball with the 10th-most horizontal break. His sinker ranked within the league’s 95th percentile in downward movement and 79th percentile in arm-side break.
In other words — he’s a super unusual dude to face. Hitters simply don’t encounter pitchers like him who work from 66 to 89 with five different offerings at an arm slot running nearly parallel to the ground.
Most modern MLB bullpens are built upon a foundation of hulking relievers max-efforting mid-to-high 90s heat and lab-designed breaking pitches that make sharp left and right turns. But Yarbrough enters games mixing speeds, picking corners, and English-ing his stuff just far enough off sweet spots to create the kind of soft contact defences at the highest level hoover into outs.
It’s unusual but it works. Yarbrough produced MLB’s second-lowest hard-hit rate last season. His average exit velocity allowed has ranked within MLB’s 97th percentile or better six years running. In an era when teams value swing-and-miss stuff more than ever, he’s annually within the bottom quarter of the league in whiff and strikeout rates. He doesn’t miss many bats. But his ability to move off barrels is nearly unmatched.
And our ability to better quantify effectiveness via advanced metrics such as Statcast’s run value, which measures how an individual offering affected an offence’s ability to score runs, allows us to truly appreciate the contributions an unorthodox pitcher such as Yarbrough can make.
His 3.19 ERA last season — good for a 123 ERA+, or 23 per cent better than league average — says one thing. But the +13 run value on his sinker (ninth-best among all MLB sinkers) says another. As does the +7 run value on his curveball (tied for seventh-highest among all MLB curveballs). On a per-pitch basis over the course of 2024, both Yarbrough’s sinker and curveball were among the most effective in the game.
You won’t see him on many highlight reels racking up strikeouts and stomping off the mound as hitters drop to knees following mighty hacks that come up empty. But take it from a guy who does fill those highlight reels — facing Yarbrough isn’t a fun night at the office.
“I respect guys so much more that have to really pitch. And that’s what he has to do,” Gausman said. “He’s not a guy that’s going to be able to blow the ball by you. But, man, he can make you look really, really ugly. And make you look really uncomfortable. He mixes speeds better than a lot of guys in the game. I just really enjoy watching those guys pitch.”
Although he reported to Blue Jays camp a week later than the rest of the club’s pitchers, Yarbrough was throwing bullpens throughout the new year in nearby Tampa Bay to maintain readiness and has plenty of time to ramp up for the season. After throwing around 35 pitches during Thursday’s live batting practice session, Yarbrough’s next step will likely be an appearance in a Grapefruit League game early this week. If all goes well there, his progression towards opening day ought to be seamless.
Of course, that’s part of the appeal with Yarbrough. He’s always ready. Late last year the Blue Jays used him in short stints, emergency relief, and as a bulk arm behind openers. It was the first season of his career that he didn’t start a game, which isn’t something he’s forgotten how to do.
Having an anytime, anywhere, however-long option like Yarbrough in the bullpen is a luxury for managers and pitching coaches as they navigate the inevitable and relentless unforeseen circumstances — injury-shortened starts, rain delays, extra-inning games — a six-month baseball season throws at them. He helps you win tomorrow as much as he helps you win today.
“Thrilled to have him back,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “His pathway to the roster is very similar to what he did last year. Knowing that he can offer length, he can offer an out in a leverage situation. He understands that and there are a lot of different ways he can help us win.”
Of course, the Blue Jays know Yarbrough better than most organizations, having faced him repeatedly during his five seasons with the Tampa Bay Rays. Yarbrough has pitched against the Blue Jays more than any other team in baseball, working to a 3.52 ERA over 94.2 innings, which is a pretty strong half-season. He can’t tell you how many times someone joked with him last year, man, we’re glad you’re on this side now.
An added benefit of that familiarity was that it gave the Blue Jays some ideas of how to help Yarbrough through a mid-season funk prior to the trade, which saw him allow 10 runs on 16 hits and eight walks over 15 innings while uncharacteristically struggling to locate throughout a frustrating month of July.
In one of Yarbrough’s first conversations with Pete Walker, the Blue Jays pitching coach told him he’d noticed a postural flaw in his delivery and showed him video of the difference in his mechanics from when he was at his best. Yarbrough quickly went to work ironing out the kinks, and after walking eight hitters in July, he walked only six over the season’s final two months.
“It was just a front glove-side thing,” Yarbrough said. “Nothing really big but it helped time everything up a little better.”
Another adjustment the Blue Jays helped Yarbrough make was heightening an arm angle that had been slowly dropping over the course of the season:
Throughout his career, Yarbrough’s arm slot has typically sat around 20 degrees (zero is perfectly horizontal to the ground, with anything above measured in positive degrees and anything below in negative). But by June and July of 2024, Yarbrough’s slot dipped all the way to 12 degrees, which would be difficult for the naked eye to detect but can make a considerable difference. To wit — last July saw Yarbrough post the highest barrel rate, second-lowest chase rate, and highest walk rate of any full month in his seven-season career.
The final piece was getting Yarbrough back to using certain pitches in the counts and areas of the zone they play best. He’d gotten away from working inside to righties, particularly with his sinker and cutter, which helps keep them backed up and opens the outer third of the plate for more sinkers, changeups, and curveballs.
After righties hit a pair of doubles and a homer off his sinker in July, Yarbrough didn’t allow a hit off the pitch to opposite-side batters in August. And he allowed only one hit — a single by a lefty — off his curveball through the end of the season.
“Especially early in my career, it was more cutters and living inside. Understanding how valuable that can be helped open up the whole plate for me,” Yarbrough said. “It just helped free everything back up and put me in a good place. Small things like that can pay huge dividends.”
And as Yarbrough continues to prove, leaning into being different can, too.
