{"id":341383,"date":"2025-12-12T23:08:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T23:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/341383\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T23:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T23:08:07","slug":"blue-jays-acquire-chase-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/341383\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays Acquire Chase Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tigers have traded right-hander Chase Lee<\/a> to the Blue Jays in exchange for minor league lefty Johan Simon<\/a>, according to announcements from both clubs. This move is likely to open a 40-man spot for the Tigers to make their signing<\/a> of Kyle Finnegan<\/a> official. The Jays had a 40-man vacancy but Lee takes up the final spot. Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon of The Athletic<\/a>\u00a0first reported that Lee was headed to the Jays while Mitch Bannon of The Athletic<\/a> first mentioned Simon as the return.<\/p>\n

Lee, 27, doesn\u2019t throw especially hard but is able to deceive batters with his sidearm delivery. Originally a draft pick of the Rangers, he was traded to the Tigers as part of the 2024 deadline deal<\/a> which sent Andrew Chafin<\/a> the other way.<\/p>\n

In 2024 2\/3 minor league innings, Lee has allowed 4.13 earned runs pere nine, with a fairly average 8% walk rate but a strong 30.9% strikeout rate. The Tigers called him up to make his major league debut in 2025. He gave them 37 1\/3 innings with a 4.10 ERA. His four-seam fastball only averaged 89.2 miles per hour while he also threw a sinker, slider and changeup. He struck out 24.3% of opponents while limiting walks to a 6.1% clip.<\/p>\n

For the Jays, Lee adds some extra bullpen depth. He still has options and can therefore be sent to Triple-A Buffalo and back throughout the year. Shi Davidi of Sportsnet<\/a> recently wrote a piece about how the Jays appear to be prioritizing different arm angles, so it\u2019s possible they are particularly attracted to Lee\u2019s sidearming abilities. He has less than a year of service time and is therefore years away from qualifying for arbitration and even further from free agency. If he\u2019s able to carve out a meaningful role in the big leagues, he could be a long-term piece for the Jays.<\/p>\n

To get Lee, the Jays are giving up Simon, an international signing out of the Dominican Republic. In 2025, he began at Single-A and then climbed to High-A and Double-A. Across those three levels, he tossed 71 relief innings with a 3.42 ERA, 25.1% strikeout rate, 9.2% walk rate and a massive 64% ground ball rate.<\/p>\n

For the Tigers, they had a 40-man roster crunch and needed to lose someone. With this deal, they\u2019ve lost a bit of immediate depth but replaced Lee with a non-roster arm who is only slightly farther away from the majors.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Rick Osentoski, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tigers have traded right-hander Chase Lee to the Blue Jays in exchange for minor league lefty Johan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,149263,82],"class_list":["post-341383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chase-lee","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341383","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=341383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}