Uncover the Shocking Twists Behind This Weekend’s Top Stories!

With all these shifts, the Jays are navigating choppy waters—but the moves hint at a squad desperate and determined to patch the holes and keep fighting. For the fanbase, it’s a wild ride, but one full of cautious hope.

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It was an eventful long weekend for Jays news. The big one was that Alejandro Kirk fractured and dislocated his thumb on an Austin Hays foul tip late in Friday’s game. His actual prognosis won’t be known until he meets with specialists on Monday. In the best case scenario, though, it’ll be several weeks before we see him again. That’s a major blow to a team already dealing with a spate of rotation injuries. Brandon Valenzuela got the call up from Buffalo, and it sounds like he and Tyler Heineman will effectively be co-starters for the next few weeks based on John Schneider’s comments. Valenzuela came over from San Diego in exchange for Will Wagner. He’s not much of an offensive threat, although he can take a walk and has more than zero power. Defence is his calling card, as he projects as a solidly above average receiver with a good arm. He won’t replicate Kirk’s bat, but he might be able to do a passable impression of his game calling and framing.

They also made a couple of acquisitions. First, they signed Patrick Corbin to a one year, $1m deal with up to $1m in incentives. Corbin has been a free agent all spring, but has apparently been stretching out and was able to go 74 pitches with A Dunedin on Saturday afternoon, striking out nine over five one run innings. The 36 year old lefty made two All Star teams in the 2010s with the Arizona Diamondbacks, but struggled after signing a big free agent contract with the Washington Nationals and was the worst regular starter in the league from 2021 through 2024, posting a 5.71 ERA across 679 innings. He regained his footing last year after a move to the Texas Rangers, posting a 4.40 ERA over 155 innings with his best strikeout rate in years. There’s a reason he was unsigned in April, but if he can give them anything close to what he did in Texas for a few weeks he could be a badly needed rotation stopgap and his length on Saturday suggests he’s close to MLB ready.