Jays sign closer Kirby Yates (1 year, $5.5m guaranteed/$4.5m in incentives)

[Kurtz]

Not good. Who would you slot in as the closer now?

Romano will be a great closer (if he's healthy).

[Hottie McShotty]

Not good. Who would you slot in as the closer now?

Romano will be a great closer (if he's healthy).

Romano would be a good choice, but lacks the experience. I think we should look at acquiring another vet closer. We have assets on this team. Atkins might have to get someone. Let's see how it plays out during the season.

The injury bug has hit this team again..

[Brinbe]

Damn this sucks. Feel terrible for him.

Romano can do the job just fine.

[polo007]

Read on Twitter

[Metallikid]

Read on Twitter

Then why the hell did we sign him?

I swear to god it feels like TJS are happening all the time to relievers now. Like all Kirby had to do was lie a little bit about how it was feeling to him, he knows there's pressure, goes out there and blows it out like he knows is going to happen and then he gets paid to recover all year. I really hate this.

[The_Hater]

They rolled the dice and lost with Yates. But since he couldn’t even start the season, it seems like they decided to ignore a lot of red flags

[Fairview4Life]

Like 80% of his small contract was incentives.

[Cyrus]

Still it's 5.5 Mill in sunken costs, not that would have gotten anyone legitimate, but you take 5.5 mill to yates, and 1.5 mill to Francisco L. or whatever the amount was, and then you got something a bit better.

Doubt the contract if he failed medicals, or had red flags in medicals will be covered by insurance as well.

[bluerap23]

Still it's 5.5 Mill in sunken costs, not that would have gotten anyone legitimate, but you take 5.5 mill to yates, and 1.5 mill to Francisco L. or whatever the amount was, and then you got something a bit better.

Doubt the contract if he failed medicals, or had red flags in medicals will be covered by insurance as well.

That plus Matz money would have got us Walker, Paxton or Odorizzi

[Schad]

It seems clear that we were looking to upgrade the back of our bullpen, so it's more likely that it'd be framed as Yates' money = Archie Bradley, or two-thirds of Trevor May or something. Good-but-not great relievers, whereas Yates was more of a home run swing: best reliever in baseball if healthy, and dead money if not.

As for Liriano, he cost us nothing. $1.5m was the price if he made the team, which he did not.