The first piece of the Toronto Blue Jays’ off-season fell into place Monday when the club exercised its $21 million, two-year option on reliever Chad Green covering the 2024 and 2025 seasons.
Locking in the 32-year-old right-hander, who returned from Tommy John surgery to appear in 12 regular-season games this summer, striking out 16 over 12 frames, further builds out a dominant back-end of the bullpen that also includes all-star closer Jordan Romano, Yimi Garcia and Erik Swanson.
Green will be paid $10.5 million in each of the next two years, the Blue Jays opting for the third option built into a creative contract signed last winter that first gave the club the choice on $27 million over three years before the pitcher could have chosen $6.25 million over one year.
In choosing $21 million over two, the Blue Jays end up slotting Green above recent two-year free-agent, leverage-relief deals like Blake Treinen ($17.5 million), Chris Martin ($17.5 million), Hector Neris ($17 million) and Joe Kelly ($17 million), but behind closer Kenley Jansen ($32 million).
There’s a case to be made for value in the three-year option, as well, put against recent deals for Rafael Montero ($34.5 million), Taylor Rogers ($33 million), Joe Jimenez ($26 million) and Kendall Graveman ($24 million).
Still, making such a large commitment to a reliever is a bit of a shift for the Blue Jays, who have tended to be more conservative in the oft volatile relief market.
Green, however, was remarkably consistent over seven seasons with the New York Yankees before blowing out his elbow in 2022 and looked to be back to himself after coming off the injured list with the Blue Jays in September.
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