{"id":593666,"date":"2026-04-10T00:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T00:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/593666\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T00:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T00:52:07","slug":"josh-fleming-austin-voth-elect-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/593666\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Fleming, Austin Voth Elect Free Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Left-hander Josh Fleming<\/a> and right-hander Austin Voth<\/a> have both cleared waivers and elected free agency. Both were designated for assignment by the Blue Jays this week. Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet<\/a> was among those to relay the news.<\/p>\n

As of a few days ago, both pitchers were with the Jays on minor league deals. The club\u2019s pitching staff suffered a few notable blows, forcing them to cycle through some depth. Cody Ponce<\/a> suffered a knee injury that eventually required surgery. Lazaro Estrada<\/a> was recalled when Ponce landed on the injured list. Estrada made one appearance in a bullpen game on Saturday, logging four innings, then got optioned back to the minors.<\/p>\n

Voth was one of the pitchers who came up when Estrada went down. Eric Lauer<\/a>, battling through the flu, started on Sunday but only went two innings. Voth tossed 2 2\/3 innings in relief. He was designated for assignment the next day when Fleming was selected. On Monday, Max Scherzer<\/a> started but he was pulled after two innings due to some right forearm tendinitis, which led to Fleming coming in to pitch three frames. Fleming was designated for assignment when the Jays recalled Patrick Corbin<\/a>, who will start tomorrow\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

A player has the right to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency if he has a previous career outright or at least three years of service time. Each of Voth and Fleming qualify on both accounts. The two of them now head into free agency to see what offers await them.<\/p>\n

Both pitchers generally have passable career numbers in swing roles. Voth has thrown 363 big league innings over 208 games, including 39 starts. He has a 4.69 earned run average, 22% strikeout rate, 8.3% walk rate and 34.4% ground ball rate. Fleming has thrown 257 2\/3 innings in 81 games, including 25 starts. He has a 4.86 ERA, 14.4% strikeout rate, 7.6% walk rate and 58.5% ground ball rate.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that one or both pitchers will re-sign with the Jays, as that\u2019s a common outcome in these situations, but they can explore alternatives. The Jays do have Trey Yesavage<\/a>, Jos\u00e9 Berr\u00edos<\/a> and Shane Bieber<\/a> working back from injuries but their depth is a bit perilous in the short term and Scherzer\u2019s status is still up in the air, meaning the pitchers would have decent paths back to the majors. Estrada is now on the minor league IL, according to his transactions tracker<\/a> at MLB.com, so that\u2019s one fewer competitor with the Jays. Though on the other hand, they\u2019re certainly not the only club dealing with pitching injuries.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Nick Turchiaro, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Left-hander Josh Fleming and right-hander Austin Voth have both cleared waivers and elected free agency. Both were designated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[196465,49,48,186865,208155,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-593666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-austin-voth","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-josh-fleming","12":"tag-lazaro-estrada","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593666","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=593666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}