Better Know Your Blue Jays 40-man: Thomas Hatch

Jan 27, 2023 - 1:44 PM

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We picked up Thomas Hatch in trade for David Phelps (who announced his retirement from baseball last week) at the end of June 2019. I remember being happy about the trade (every team needs more Toms). He looked like a reasonable prospect at the time.

He is a 28-year-old, right-handed pitcher with one more option year left.

Since coming to the Jays, he’s had 40.1 innings in the majors, 21 games, 4 starts, with a 5.58 ERA. He looked pretty good, coming out of the pen in 2020. Last year he made a crappy spot start, giving up 10 earned in 4.2 innings.

At Buffalo, over the past two seasons, he pitched in 43 games, 36 starts with a 4.88 ERA. In 195.2 innings, he allowed 185 hits, 26 home runs, and 57 walks with 183 strikeouts.

Hatch does throw hard. He has a mid-90s fastball, a hard slider, change and a sinker.

He did get ripped off some. He did well as a reliever in 2019, and likely could have continued to, but the team decided that we didn’t have much starting depth, and moved Thomas back to the rotation in Buffalo, waiting for a moment that didn’t come.

Right now, he’s a long way back on the depth chart, both as starting pitcher and a reliever.

As a starting pitcher, he’s well back of our starting five: Manoah, Gausman, Berrios, Bassitt and Kikuchi (with the possibility that the team could pick someone up to take Kikuchi’s spot).

Beyond that, he’d be behind Nate Pearson (if they don’t decide he’s in the bullpen), Yosver Zulueta, Zach Thompson, Drew Hutchison, Mitch White, and maybe Casey Lawrence. And, as the season goes on, Ricky Tiedemann and maybe others will pass him by.

As a reliever, 14+ guys must be ahead of him at the moment.

If he has a good spring, he might move up a few spots, but I think he is more likely to be DFAed if some non-roster player makes the team.

Steamer figures he’ll get into 20 MLB games, totalling 20 innings, all out of the bullpen, with a 4.01 ERA.