On Sunday night at 11:59 p.m. ET, the playoff rosters across Major League Baseball will lock, to a certain degree.
Teams will still have decisions to make when October arrives, but only players on the team’s 40-man and minor league rosters by this crucial deadline will be eligible for postseason play.
Just ahead of that all-important deadline, the Toronto Blue Jays made one final, very intriguing addition.
According to multiple reports, including ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the Blue Jays claimed utility player Isiah Kiner-Falefa off waivers from the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Just over 13 months ago, Toronto traded Kiner-Falefa to the Pirates at the July deadline, when they were in last place in the American League East and looking to stockpile prospects. It’s certainly an indicator of positive change for the Blue Jays that this season, it’s veteran big-leaguers they’re stockpiling.
Kiner-Falefa, 30, has mostly been playing third base for the Pirates of late, the same position at which he won a Gold Glove for the Texas Rangers during the 2020 season.
Offensively, Kiner-Falefa isn’t a major factor this year, putting up a .632 OPS in 119 games. But for the Blue Jays last year, he had one of the most productive half-seasons of his career, with a .758 OPS and 3.2 bWAR in 83 games.
The Blue Jays led the New York Yankees, another former Kiner-Falefa employer, by two games in the American League East entering play on Sunday.
Toronto was about to kick off a Sunday series finale against the Milwaukee Brewers as the news was announced, and Kiner-Falefa, who played for the Pirates in the first two games of their series this weekend while on waivers, couldn’t get to Canada from Boston. But he should be available for the Jays when they open their road series with the Cincinnati Reds on Monday.
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