{"id":392136,"date":"2026-01-05T01:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T01:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/392136\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T01:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T01:09:07","slug":"blue-jays-designate-paxton-schultz-for-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/392136\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays Designate Paxton Schultz For Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Blue Jays announced that right-hander Paxton Schultz<\/a> has been designated for assignment.\u00a0 The transaction clears a 40-man roster spot for Kazuma Okamoto<\/a>, whose four-year, $60MM deal with Toronto has now been officially announced.<\/p>\n

A 14th-round pick for the Brewers in the 2019 draft, Schultz was traded to the Jays in 2021 and he has posted a 4.47 ERA over 203 1\/3 innings of Triple-A ball.\u00a0 A good deal of that damage came when Schultz was being primarily used as a starter in 2023, but his numbers have improved since moving to more or less a full-time relief role.\u00a0 The move to the pen saw Schultz cut back on his walks and increase his strikeouts, as the Jays saw first-hand when Schultz made his MLB debut this past season.<\/p>\n

The righty had a 4.38 ERA, 25.5% strikeout rate, and 7.3% walk rate over his first 24 2\/3 innings in the Show, working mostly as a multi-inning reliever and making a pair of pseudo-starts during bullpen games.\u00a0 His 3.43 SIERA was markedly better than his 4.38 ERA, as Schultz was hampered by a .333 BABIP and four homers allowed during his small sample size of big league action.<\/p>\n

It was an overall respectable debut for Schultz, yet he\u2019ll now get the unwelcome gift of a DFA just a day before his 28th birthday.\u00a0 Despite his solid performance, the Blue Jays have enough other right-handed relief options that Schultz may have been a little expendable.\u00a0 Designating Schultz does run the risk for the Jays that another team could claim Schultz away on waivers, which is a distinct possibility given that Schultz has two minor league option years remaining and plenty of clubs are in need of bullpen help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blue Jays announced that right-hander Paxton Schultz has been designated for assignment.\u00a0 The transaction clears a 40-man…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,170750,591,209823,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-392136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-kazuma-okamoto","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-paxton-schultz","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}