TORONTO — By trading away eight players at the trade deadline, the Toronto Blue Jays flipped the focus to 2025, and given how poorly the first four months of the season played out, it was a necessary pivot.
But before any plans for next season could really take shape, significant energy had to be devoted to the here and now. At that point in the season, team decision makers kept pointing to the final two months of the regular season as a valuable chance to understand what was working, what wasn’t and what would be needed.
With less than a week remaining in the regular season, the Blue Jays are getting closer to those answers. It hasn’t always happened the way they would have scripted it — Monday’s 4-1 loss to the Red Sox was uninspired and forgettable — but the feedback they’ve gotten has still been essential.
Granted, there’s lots to like about the last couple of months starting with the resurgence of Bowden Francis, who makes his final start of the season Tuesday. And somewhere on that list of positives, Alejandro Kirk belongs, too.
A bigger role opened up for Kirk after the Blue Jays traded Jansen to the Red Sox, and the 25-year-old has responded with a strong finish for the second season in a row. Since the Jansen trade, Kirk's entered play Monday hitting .280 with a .732 OPS and three of the five home runs he's hit this season.
At the plate, Kirk collected another single Monday, but more impressively, he threw out three baserunners in support of starter Chris Bassitt and the bullpen. Though Kirk’s always been viewed as an excellent framer (95th percentile framing per Baseball Savant), he has now caught a career-best 27 would-be base stealers this season, as many as he caught 2022 and 2023 combined.
“I think he's in a good rhythm,” said manager John Schneider. “His exchange in getting rid of the ball has been really, really good and his throws have been really, really accurate. So it's a pretty good recipe.”
“It's been great to see him take this opportunity and run with it and keep himself ready to go,” Schneider said. “And I think there's still progress to be made for him. It’s a tough ask at that position for anyone, and he’ll have to keep working in the off-season and be ready to do that from the get-go next year. But since we've since we've traded Jano, he's been arguably one of the better defensive catchers in baseball. He just did a great job of seizing the opportunity.”
Making his 31st start of the season, Bassitt walked seven while allowing three runs (two earned) in 4.1 innings. Afterwards, he said he intends to start Sunday, the final game of the season, which lines up as his start day.
"I mean, who's going to start?" Bassitt said. "(Ryan) Yarbrough? He's going to free agency. That's not fair to him. To have the bullpen cover nine innings, that's not fair to them. I'm healthy. I'm good. So, I'm going to start."
As for Kirk, most would have expected him to play well enough over these last couple months to establish himself as the team’s primary catcher going into 2025. What’s more interesting is what’s happened around him.
Clearly the Blue Jays need a better second catcher than what they’ve had most of the last two months — that’s why they designated Brian Serven for assignment recently. But while bringing back Jansen would address that need neatly, other areas need more attention.
There’s a lineup that managed just six hits against Tanner Houck and the Red Sox Monday. Beyond Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who remains six hits shy of 200 after a hitless day at the plate, there’s no clear 30-home run power threat on this team. Presumably, a power bat will be high on this team’s winter wish list.
Plus, there’s a bullpen that ranks dead last among MLB teams in WAR and bottom four in baseball in ERA, FIP and strikeout rate. They’ve been cycling through waiver claims in the hopes of finding something, and Dillon Tate has people’s attention, but walking the first two hitters he faced Monday didn’t help matters. Fixing this group will require a multi-pronged approach, but it’s certainly easier to pull off a turnover if significant free agent spending is possible.
All of which to say this team has a lot of needs, and while a second catcher would be nice, Jansen’s played well enough that he’s one of the top free agent backstops available along with Carson Kelly and Kyle Higashioka. Starting jobs and multi-year deals may be on the table for him, leaving Kirk and a question mark in Toronto.
That uncertainty will be familiar for the Blue Jays as they approach this off-season, but at least there’s Kirk, quietly holding his own.
"He's done a really good job of controlling the run game,” Bassitt said. “He's been unbelievable."
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