The Blue Jays are staring at a rotation that needs help, and Sonny Gray fits the kind of move that could steady the whole thing.
At 37 next season, Gray won’t be the shiny long-term answer. But he does bring something Toronto clearly needs: a proven starter who can handle innings, take the ball every fifth day and slot near the top of a staff. That matters for a team trying to patch together a rotation that has been hit hard by injuries in recent seasons.
Gray’s track record is hard to ignore. He has reached at least 117 innings in 12 of his 14 major league seasons, missing that mark only in his 2013 debut with the Athletics and in the shortened 2020 season.
Over the last four years, spanning his age-33 through age-36 seasons with the Twins, Cardinals and Red Sox, he has topped 166 innings each year. He has also pitched like more than just a durable arm, posting the sixth-highest fWAR (10.8) among only eight right-handed starters who have reached at least 10.0 fWAR since 2023.
For Toronto, the appeal is obvious. The club needs at least a couple of pitchers who can stabilize the group, and one of them needs to be a real difference-maker.
Dylan Cease and Jose Soriano are the highest-projection arms for 2027, but beyond that the picture gets murky fast. Trey Yesavage should be the third most reliable name when healthy, though that was not fully the case this year.
Max Scherzer’s return remains uncertain, and left-handers Patrick Corbin (15) and Shane Bieber (11) are both free agents after combining for 26 starts.
If the Jays want to calm the noise around the rotation, the cleanest path is adding an elite starter alongside Cease, who has been one of the best pitchers in the league and put together a 2026 season worthy of a Cy Young, even if Cam Schlittler is the favorite to win it.
That puts names like Freddy Peralta, Michael King, Trevor Rogers and Gray into the conversation, along with a cheaper mid-rotation option.
Gray would not come without questions. The upside is easy to see: he just finished a strong season at age 36, going 2.72 ERA, leading the league with 18 wins and finishing second in quality starts with 20 in 29 starts, a career high. He also knows the division and has shown he can still work deep into games.
The concern is that some of the underlying numbers have slipped. His 3.68 xFIP was up from 2.82 and 3.07 in his previous two seasons with St.
Louis. The bigger red flag is the strikeout drop, from 10.01 in 2025 to 7.93 this year, his lowest rate since his last full season with the Athletics in 2016, when he went 5-11 with a 5.69 ERA and a 7.23 K/9.
Still, Gray managed the decline better than the raw strikeout numbers might suggest. His Pitching percentile improved from the 49th in 2025 to the 87th this year, even though his Whiff% fell from the 60th to the 33rd percentile and his K% dropped from the 79th to the 43rd.
The defense behind him matters too. The Red Sox gave him one of the best outfield trios in baseball in 2026, and that helped his BABIP allowed fall from .329 in 2025 to .283.
Toronto could offer strong defense as well, which would help if the contact he allows keeps creeping up. There is also a chance he could get some of that strikeout rate back.
Steamer sees enough to project a 3.63 xFIP for 2027, with a better strikeout rate and a walk rate close to what he posted in 2026. If Toronto decides age is the biggest concern, a one-year deal worth $25 million with an option for 2028 tied to performance could be the kind of structure that makes sense.
In Other News...
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Toronto is now weighing how to handle a few contracts that have not gone as planned, with underperformance and injuries complicating the roster picture. Andres Gimenez, Jose Berrios and Anthony Santander all sit somewhere on that spectrum, and the decisions around them could shape how aggressively the Blue Jays are able to address other needs as the winter market starts to take form. [Read more 🡒]
Blue Jays Prospects Could Shape Torontos Next Big Winter Move
The Blue Jays have never been shy about using their prospect depth to chase help at the big-league level, and that history is part of what makes this winter worth watching. Toronto has already shown a willingness to move top-ranked young talent in the past, and this latest group of prospects gives the front office another batch of names to weigh as it looks for ways to strengthen the roster.
Among the players in that mix are Sean Keys and Nolan Perry, two prospects whose recent progress has put them squarely on the radar for different reasons. Some of the group could still carve out roles in Toronto, while others may be viewed more as trade pieces if the Jays decide the best path to improvement is to deal from their system again. [Read more 🡒]