Cody Ponce is a 6’6”, 31-year-old (32 on April 25th), right-handed pitcher. I wonder if we could get him to recreate the Jon Rauch explosion at umpire Alfonso Marquez where John Farrell tried to hold him back from punching the umpire.
The Jays signed Ponce on December 2nd of last year to a three-year, $30 million contract. He spent last season in the Korean Baseball League, where he went 17-1 with a 1.89 ERA in 29 starts. In 180.2 innings, he allowed 128 hits, with 41 walks and 252 strikeouts.
The four years before that, he pitched in Japan, where he wasn’t as successful: 4.54 ERA in 202 innings.
Before that, he had pitched for the Pirates, in 2020 and 2021, just 55.1 innings in all, with a 5.86 ERA. And before that, he was a second-round draft pick by the Brewers, but he didn’t make it majors with them.
In his time overseas, he added a bit to his fastball (sits around 95 mph, tops out at 98), and added a splitter and a ‘kick changeup’. What is a kick changeup? Well, Lookout Landing said this:
The kick change is essentially a circle change grip, thrown like a fastball or slider, with a twist. The pitcher spikes their middle finger up to press on the seam, which allows that finger to “kick” the ball forward on release, tilting the axis of the ball forward at release and allowing it to catch more significant air resistance in flight. With this “kick”, despite the ball coming out of the hand with slider-like rotation, it will tail to the pitcher’s arm side and sink due to its lower spin rate and its particular spin axis. The examples I’ve seen tend to maintain solid velocity, akin to hard slider.
Here is some video of him:
What will he do with the Jays? Steam has him making 47 appearances with 24 starts (I don’t know how he’s getting the 23 relief appearances in with 24 starts, but ok), 162 innings, a 3.90 ERA and a 2.5 fWAR.
I’d guess that the Jays intend him to be a full time starter, but it is possible that the Jays will treat him like the did Eric Lauer last year, move him to the pen, late him the season, when someone like Max Scherzer is ready to join the rotation.