{"id":321570,"date":"2025-12-03T00:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T00:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/321570\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T00:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T00:11:08","slug":"blue-jays-cody-ponce-agree-to-three-year-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/321570\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays, Cody Ponce Agree To Three-Year Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

5:41pm: It\u2019ll be a $30MM guarantee, reports ESPN\u2019s Jeff Passan<\/a>. The deal is pending a physical.<\/p>\n

5:36pm: The Blue Jays are finalizing a three-year contract with free agent starter Cody Ponce<\/a>, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic<\/a>. The 6\u20196\u2033 righty returns to the majors after an MVP-winning season in the Korea Baseball Organization.<\/p>\n

Toronto continues to load up in the rotation on the same day they finalized their seven-year contract<\/a> with\u00a0Dylan Cease<\/a>. They already had a strong top four with Cease,\u00a0Trey Yesavage<\/a>,\u00a0Kevin Gausman<\/a> and\u00a0Shane Bieber<\/a>. Ponce and\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Berr\u00edos<\/a> project as the fifth and sixth starters in what looks like one of the strongest rotations in baseball. Eric Lauer<\/a>, who pitched to a 3.18 ERA over 104 2\/3 innings in a swing role this year, is down to seventh on the depth chart.<\/p>\n

The three-year deal and $10MM average annual value suggests the Jays view Ponce as a starter. He doesn\u2019t have much rotation experience in the big leagues, starting five of 20 appearances with the Pirates between 2020-21. Ponce struggled in that first look but has reinvented himself since moving to Asia. He pitched parts of three seasons in Japan before a breakout 2025 season with the KBO\u2019s Hanwha Eagles.<\/p>\n

Ponce took the ball 29 times and turned in a 1.89 earned run average across 180 2\/3 innings. He recorded a league-best 36.2% strikeout percentage against a tidy 6% walk rate. Ponce led the league with 252 strikeouts overall and was the only KBO pitcher with a sub-2.00 ERA in more than 100 innings.<\/p>\n

The numbers alone would have been enough for Ponce to get back on the MLB radar. The more important factor for his contract was that his stuff has taken a matching jump. Ponce averaged 93.2 MPH on his fastball during his big league look, but a scout with a non-Toronto team told MLBTR in October that his velocity had climbed into the mid-90s. Eno Sarris of The Athletic<\/a> wrote earlier this week that his average heater was in the 95 MPH range, and he has been clocked up to 98. Ponce has reportedly picked up a splitter \u2014 the carrying pitch for Yesavage and Gausman as well \u2014 and mixes in a cutter and curveball.<\/p>\n

Ponce throws harder and has better secondary stuff than\u00a0Erick Fedde<\/a> did when he returned to North America after his own MVP season in Korea. As a result, the 31-year-old Ponce gets an extra guaranteed year and doubled the $15MM guarantee that Fedde received from the White Sox over the 2023-24 offseason. Fedde, for what it\u2019s worth, pitched well in his first year back before his numbers cratered this past season.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5:41pm: It\u2019ll be a $30MM guarantee, reports ESPN\u2019s Jeff Passan. The deal is pending a physical. 5:36pm: The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,136304,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-321570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cody-ponce","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}