This sort of got buried behind the Daulton Varsho trade news, but the Chicago Cubs announced on Friday evening that they claimed left-handed pitcher Anthony Kay off of waivers from the Blue Jays.

Kay, 27, had been designated for assignment earlier in the week in order to make room on the 40-man roster for Chris Bassitt.

The New York Mets selected Kay in the 29th round of the 2013 draft out of high school but he didn’t sign, and they again drafted him in 2016, this time in the first round. After a couple of years in New York’s system, they packaged Kay up along with Simeon Woods Richardson and traded them to the Blue Jays in exchange for Marcus Stroman.

Kay made his big-league debut with the Blue Jays in 2019 a few weeks after the trade. All told, he made 28 appearances for the Blue Jays, seven of which were starts, and he posted a 5.48 ERA. In 2022, Kay’s season was limited to just 23 1/3 innings because of injury.

There was hope that the Blue Jays could sneak Kay through waivers and have him in Triple-A as pitching depth heading into the 2023 season but it isn’t at all surprising that somebody was interested in taking a flyer on a pitcher with notable prospect pedigree.