Blue Jays sign Chris Coghlan to Minor League deal

You’ve been asking for it all spring, and here it is. The Blue Jays have inked left-handed hitting outfielder Chris Coghlan to a minor league contract. Outfield depth!

Apparently Coghlan will start the season with Triple-A Buffalo, giving the Blue Jays some flexibility in the short term to figure out where he fits on the roster and who’s spot he’s going to take. Logic would suggest that Coghlan and Melvin Upton would make an excellent platoon, because one hits righties well and the other hits lefties well, but the Jays seem to like the idea of the Upton/Zeke Carrera platoon (despite Zeke’s reverse splits), for whatever reason.

Coghlan had a terrible season last year, but was worth 3.3 wins in 2015 and 2.4 wins in 2014 with the Chicago Cubs. Last winter, the Cubs dealt him to Oakland, where everything went to hell. He slashed a .146/.215/.272 line with the A’s before being traded back to Chicago in June, where he improved his numbers all the way up to a respectable .252/.391/.388 slash, and was a depth player on their World Series winning roster.

We’ll have more of an idea on where Coghlan fits later today, as the Jays are expected to make their final cuts after the game in Montreal. That said, the team is apparently still going to be active in looking for upgrades on the waiver wire as teams make final cuts of their own, so there could be even more changes than expected.