{"id":447893,"date":"2026-02-04T04:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T04:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/447893\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T04:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T04:52:07","slug":"blue-jays-have-continued-interest-in-framber-valdez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/447893\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays Have Continued Interest In Framber Valdez"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Blue Jays remain interested in top free agent starter\u00a0Framber Valdez<\/a>, report Jon Heyman and Joel Sherman of The New York Post<\/a>. Toronto reportedly met with Valdez at the GM Meetings back in early November. That predated their seven-year, $210MM contract with\u00a0Dylan Cease<\/a>, so it was hardly a given that the Jays were still involved.<\/p>\n

Valdez is arguably the last impact player available on the open market. He\u2019s certainly the highest-upside player remaining. There\u2019s a decent supply of unsigned starting pitching, but most other players fit in the middle or back of the rotation. That includes\u00a0Zac Gallen<\/a>, the only other free agent who rejected a qualifying offer. Valdez is at least a high-end #2 starter and has ace potential.<\/p>\n

The southpaw finished top 10 in Cy Young voting each season from 2022-24. He looked on that pace through the All-Star Break last year, turning in a 2.75 earned run average over 19 starts. Things went off the rails in the second half, as Valdez surrendered a 5.20 ERA over his final 12 starts. He also had the much publicized cross-up incident with third catcher\u00a0C\u00e9sar Salazar<\/a>, as he came under fire for not showing much immediate concern after hitting Salazar in the chest with a fastball. Astros officials maintained they did not believe Valdez intentionally crossed the catcher up, and Salazar did his best to downplay the situation publicly.<\/p>\n

In any case, Valdez hit the market coming off arguably his worst two-month stretch in years. He\u2019s entering his age-32 season, an age at which five-plus year deals for free agent starting pitchers are rare. Blake Snell<\/a> and\u00a0Jacob deGrom<\/a> are the only pitchers at 32 or older to sign for five years within the past decade. It\u2019s not clear what Valdez sought at the beginning of the offseason, but it\u2019s generally not a great omen for players\u2019 markets if they\u2019re unsigned into February. A short-term deal with opt-outs probably isn\u2019t as appealing for Valdez as it would be for a younger free agent.<\/p>\n

The Jays already run six deep in the rotation with Cease,\u00a0Kevin Gausman<\/a>, Trey Yesavage<\/a>,\u00a0Shane Bieber<\/a>,\u00a0Cody Ponce<\/a> and\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Berr\u00edos<\/a>. They\u2019re broadly involved on every top free agent, so it\u2019s possible they\u2019re circling back to see if Valdez\u2019s market has dropped to a level at which they feel the value is too good to ignore. Bieber has battled some elbow fatigue. Yesavage had some injury questions in college and just completed his first full professional season. Ponce is something of an unknown coming back from Korea, though the Jays wouldn\u2019t have guaranteed him $30MM if they didn\u2019t think he could be an effective starter.<\/p>\n

Toronto could certainly justify taking this group into the season, but they\u2019re evidently still kicking around rotation possibilities. Heyman said on an MLB Network appearance<\/a> this afternoon that the Jays have some amount of interest in bringing\u00a0Max Scherzer<\/a> back. That\u2019d obviously be a much cheaper move than even a short-term deal for Valdez, but Scherzer isn\u2019t as clear an upgrade of an upgrade over Toronto\u2019s back-end arms.<\/p>\n

RosterResource<\/a> calculates the Jays\u2019 luxury tax payroll around $310MM. That\u2019s already a franchise record and lands them in the top tier of penalization. The Jays are near the Yankees and Phillies to round out a clear top five in projected spending behind the Dodgers and Mets. Signing Valdez would probably push them close to $340MM in CBT commitments, which would take them ahead of the Yankees and Philadelphia. They\u2019d pay a 90% tax on the average annual value of any further free agent contracts. A hypothetical $30MM salary for Valdez would add another $27MM to their tax bill and amount to a $57MM investment overall.<\/p>\n

Valdez comes attached to draft compensation, though that penalty isn\u2019t as severe for the Jays because they already signed Cease. Toronto punted their second-round pick and their compensatory pick for\u00a0Bo Bichette<\/a> (after the fourth round) to add Cease. They\u2019d give up their third and fifth rounders for Valdez, but those are each outside the top 100 overall.<\/p>\n

Houston paid the luxury tax last year, so they\u2019ll only receive a compensation pick after round four once Valdez signs elsewhere. That\u2019s all but inevitable, as they\u2019ve never seemed interested in meeting the southpaw\u2019s asking price on a free agent deal. The collective bargaining agreement prohibits team personnel from explicitly saying they\u2019re not pursuing specific players, but Houston GM Dana Brown reiterated this afternoon that the Astros \u201chaven\u2019t had any conversations lately\u201d with the pitcher\u2019s camp (video via Jason Bristol of KHOU 11 News<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blue Jays remain interested in top free agent starter\u00a0Framber Valdez, report Jon Heyman and Joel Sherman of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[87208,381,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-447893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-framber-valdez","9":"tag-max-scherzer","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}