<p>Shopping for the latest and greatest relievers on the market is always fun at first but every team needs to take a flier or two on some bounce-back candidates. With every contending team, at least one unheralded reliever always comes out of the woodwork to contribute.</p>
<p>At last week&#8217;s MLB GM Meetings, Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins<a href="https://bluejaysnation.com/news/blue-jays-gm-ross-atkins-says-bullpen-overhaul-must-be-creative"> said the team</a> would need to get &#8220;creative&#8221; in overhauling the club&#8217;s bullpen ahead of the 2025 season. &#8220;Creative&#8221; can mean many things; shopping at the top of the market, making trades, minor league free agents, internal players stepping up, and bounce-back candidates returning to form.</p>
<p>One arm the Blue Jays could bet on having an impact would be right-hander <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sewalpa01.shtml">Paul Sewald</a>. After a rocky season where he missed significant time on the IL and lost his role as closer with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Sewald could be one of those &#8220;creative&#8221; pieces Atkins was talking about amongst the free agent market.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s look back at what happened with Sewald this past season and how he could be an ideal fit for this Blue Jays squad that had one of their worst bullpen performances in franchise history.</p>
<h2>Paul Sewald in 2024</h2>
<p>&#8220;Wild&#8221; doesn&#8217;t even begin to describe the variance in Sewald&#8217;s campaign in the desert. Right out of the gate, he suffered an oblique injury in Spring Training, which caused him to miss the first six weeks of the regular season. Sewald didn&#8217;t make his 2024 debut until May 7.</p>
<p>He was lights out through May and June, sporting a 0.54 ERA through his first 18 appearances. During those 18 games, he surrendered only 5 hits and limited opponents to a .093 batting average. Shortly thereafter, the wheels fell off for Sewald.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">It was time for Paul Sewald to close out a <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Dbacks?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Dbacks</a> win. 🥹 <a href="https://t.co/JKw18yjdM7">pic.twitter.com/JKw18yjdM7</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) <a href="https://twitter.com/Dbacks/status/1788014308170805253?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 8, 2024</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>His workload ramped up in July as he made 12 appearances, but his ERA that month alone shot up to 10.80. Sewald started the month with appearances where he blew leads in consecutive games, then blew a save which took his ERA up to 3.93. By the end of July, the Diamondbacks had seen enough and <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/d-backs-remove-paul-sewald-from-closer-role">removed</a> Sewald from the closer&#8217;s role. It got so bad that the Dbacks didn&#8217;t trust him pitching in leverage at all, and he finished the season in low leverage spots.</p>
<p>He missed the final few weeks of the season with another stint on the IL with left neck discomfort.</p>
<h2>Sewald&#8217;s contract and projections</h2>
<p>Sewald and the Diamondbacks avoided arbitration last winter and agreed on a $7.35 million salary for the 2024 season. This is the second time in the right-hander&#8217;s career that he&#8217;s testing the waters in free agency, as he signed a minor league deal with the Seattle Mariners after being non-tendered by the New York Mets following the 2020 campaign.</p>
<p>There aren&#8217;t any contract projections out there for Sewald, but something close to what he earned this past season in Arizona seems like fair market value for a reliever of his stature. <a href="https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/player/market-value/_/id/21712/paul-sewald">Spotrac</a> estimated his market value at $11.6 million, which feels quite high after his rough 2024 season. It&#8217;s difficult to see him commanding a multi-year contract, and I&#8217;d be shocked if he gets anything north of $10 million. Something in the one-year $6-7 million range seems appropriate.</p>
<h2>Is Sewald a fit for the Blue Jays?</h2>
<p>Heading into 2024, Sewald was on a great run as a reliable high-leverage right-handed reliever, which makes him a strong bounce-back candidate in 2025. He also should be a buy-low option for a team like the Blue Jays, but the unfortunate part is that 29 other teams are also thinking the same thing. Looking under the hood, Sewald&#8217;s red flags were his decreased strikeout rate (which dipped 6% this past year) and that his hard-hit rate jumped 12.3% from 2023 to 2024. His fastball was a hittable pitch this year, when in years past that was his bread and butter for striking guys out.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">It was time for Paul Sewald to pitch. 👀 <a href="https://t.co/XlVPW3bouj">pic.twitter.com/XlVPW3bouj</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) <a href="https://twitter.com/Dbacks/status/1690863161690509312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 13, 2023</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>With a few tweaks, it&#8217;s easy to see Sewald regaining his form as a solid reliever once again. I don&#8217;t know if that would be in high-leverage spots for the Blue Jays, but his 4.31 ERA would&#8217;ve been better than many of the arms in Toronto&#8217;s bullpen last year. It also doesn&#8217;t hurt to have a reliever who has closed games before in case the Blue Jays decide to non-tender Jordan Romano or if Romano isn&#8217;t quite ready to go out of the gate to start next year. On paper, Sewald is a better closer candidate than someone like Chad Green.</p>
<p>Given his body of work, it&#8217;s easy to look at Sewald&#8217;s 2024 campaign as an outlier, perhaps due to the lingering effects of that injury he suffered in Spring Training. He also left one too many fastballs over the heart of the plate, which explains the sudden spike in his hard-hit rate.</p>
<p>If the Blue Jays aren’t in the market for a top-tier relief arm like Tanner Scott or Jeff Hoffman, picking up a reliever like Sewald in the next few tiers below would help raise the floor for the Blue Jays bullpen in 2025. We all know that the floor couldn&#8217;t get much lower, so any pitcher would be a welcome improvement.</p>


Shopping for the latest and greatest relievers on the market is always fun at first but every team needs to take a flier or two on some bounce-back candidates. With every contending team, at least one unheralded reliever always comes out of the woodwork to contribute.

At last week's MLB GM Meetings, Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins<a href="https://bluejaysnation.com/news/blue-jays-gm-ross-atkins-says-bullpen-overhaul-must-be-creative"> said the team</a> would need to get "creative" in overhauling the club's bullpen ahead of the 2025 season. "Creative" can mean many things; shopping at the top of the market, making trades, minor league free agents, internal players stepping up, and bounce-back candidates returning to form.

One arm the Blue Jays could bet on having an impact would be right-hander <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sewalpa01.shtml">Paul Sewald</a>. After a rocky season where he missed significant time on the IL and lost his role as closer with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Sewald could be one of those "creative" pieces Atkins was talking about amongst the free agent market.

Let's look back at what happened with Sewald this past season and how he could be an ideal fit for this Blue Jays squad that had one of their worst bullpen performances in franchise history.
<h2>Paul Sewald in 2024</h2>
"Wild" doesn't even begin to describe the variance in Sewald's campaign in the desert. Right out of the gate, he suffered an oblique injury in Spring Training, which caused him to miss the first six weeks of the regular season. Sewald didn't make his 2024 debut until May 7.

He was lights out through May and June, sporting a 0.54 ERA through his first 18 appearances. During those 18 games, he surrendered only 5 hits and limited opponents to a .093 batting average. Shortly thereafter, the wheels fell off for Sewald.

https://twitter.com/Dbacks/status/1788014308170805253

His workload ramped up in July as he made 12 appearances, but his ERA that month alone shot up to 10.80. Sewald started the month with appearances where he blew leads in consecutive games, then blew a save which took his ERA up to 3.93. By the end of July, the Diamondbacks had seen enough and <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/d-backs-remove-paul-sewald-from-closer-role">removed</a> Sewald from the closer's role. It got so bad that the Dbacks didn't trust him pitching in leverage at all, and he finished the season in low leverage spots.

He missed the final few weeks of the season with another stint on the IL with left neck discomfort.
<h2>Sewald's contract and projections</h2>
Sewald and the Diamondbacks avoided arbitration last winter and agreed on a $7.35 million salary for the 2024 season. This is the second time in the right-hander's career that he's testing the waters in free agency, as he signed a minor league deal with the Seattle Mariners after being non-tendered by the New York Mets following the 2020 campaign.

There aren't any contract projections out there for Sewald, but something close to what he earned this past season in Arizona seems like fair market value for a reliever of his stature. <a href="https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/player/market-value/_/id/21712/paul-sewald">Spotrac</a> estimated his market value at $11.6 million, which feels quite high after his rough 2024 season. It's difficult to see him commanding a multi-year contract, and I'd be shocked if he gets anything north of $10 million. Something in the one-year $6-7 million range seems appropriate.
<h2>Is Sewald a fit for the Blue Jays?</h2>
Heading into 2024, Sewald was on a great run as a reliable high-leverage right-handed reliever, which makes him a strong bounce-back candidate in 2025. He also should be a buy-low option for a team like the Blue Jays, but the unfortunate part is that 29 other teams are also thinking the same thing. Looking under the hood, Sewald's red flags were his decreased strikeout rate (which dipped 6% this past year) and that his hard-hit rate jumped 12.3% from 2023 to 2024. His fastball was a hittable pitch this year, when in years past that was his bread and butter for striking guys out.

https://twitter.com/Dbacks/status/1690863161690509312

With a few tweaks, it's easy to see Sewald regaining his form as a solid reliever once again. I don't know if that would be in high-leverage spots for the Blue Jays, but his 4.31 ERA would've been better than many of the arms in Toronto's bullpen last year. It also doesn't hurt to have a reliever who has closed games before in case the Blue Jays decide to non-tender Jordan Romano or if Romano isn't quite ready to go out of the gate to start next year. On paper, Sewald is a better closer candidate than someone like Chad Green.

Given his body of work, it's easy to look at Sewald's 2024 campaign as an outlier, perhaps due to the lingering effects of that injury he suffered in Spring Training. He also left one too many fastballs over the heart of the plate, which explains the sudden spike in his hard-hit rate.

If the Blue Jays aren’t in the market for a top-tier relief arm like Tanner Scott or Jeff Hoffman, picking up a reliever like Sewald in the next few tiers below would help raise the floor for the Blue Jays bullpen in 2025. We all know that the floor couldn't get much lower, so any pitcher would be a welcome improvement.

Free Agent Profile: The Blue Jays should bet on Paul Sewald as a bounce-back candidate

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