{"id":789547,"date":"2026-05-11T21:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T21:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/789547\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T21:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T21:03:15","slug":"blue-jays-designate-eric-lauer-for-assignment-place-addison-barger-on-il","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/789547\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays Designate Eric Lauer For Assignment, Place Addison Barger On IL"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Blue Jays announced that left-hander Eric Lauer<\/a><\/strong> has been designated for assignment. His roster spot goes to right-hander Yariel Rodr\u00edguez<\/a><\/strong><\/strong>. It was reported yesterday that the Jays would be selecting Rodriguez to the roster. The Jays also placed infielder\/outfielder Addison Barger<\/a><\/strong> on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to May 10th, with right elbow inflammation. Outfielder Yohendrick Pinango<\/a><\/strong> has been recalled to take Barger\u2019s spot.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been quite a rollercoaster ride for Lauer and the Blue Jays. He signed a minor league deal with the club heading into the 2025 season. He was added to the major league roster in late April as the Jays were dealing with some injuries and some poor performances.<\/p>\n

Lauer ended up sticking around and played a notable role in the club\u2019s strong season. Often getting shuffled between the rotation and the bullpen, Lauer made 15 starts and 13 relief appearances. On the whole, he logged 104 2\/3 innings with a 3.18 earned run average, 23.9% strikeout rate and 6.1% walk rate. He added another 8 2\/3 innings in the postseason with a 3.12 ERA, as the Jays went all the way to Game Seven of the World Series.<\/p>\n

From there, things have turned sour, both in terms of performance and Lauer\u2019s relationship with the club. The Jays retained him for 2026 via arbitration but the two sides couldn\u2019t agree on a salary, eventually going to a hearing. It was a unique case because Lauer had been in arbitration before and raised his salary to $5.075MM in 2023. But he struggled and lost his roster spot, spending 2024 in the minors and in Korea, before having a bounceback with the Jays in 2025.<\/p>\n

He filed at $5.75MM and the Jays at $4.4MM. The club won. He appeared to be frustrated by that outcome, telling Hazel Mae of Sportsnet<\/a> that he felt his earning power was damaged by getting bumped to the bullpen late in the year when the Jays acquired Shane Bieber<\/a><\/strong> and called up Trey Yesavage<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Coming into 2026, there was a time where it looked like Lauer would again be pushed to a bullpen role. The Jays had signed Dylan Cease<\/a><\/strong> and Cody Ponce<\/a><\/strong>, in addition to re-signing Max Scherzer<\/a><\/strong>. With those three joining Kevin Gausman<\/a><\/strong>, Jos\u00e9 Berr\u00edos<\/a><\/strong>, Yesavage and Bieber, it looked like quite a crowded group. Lauer again seemed less than enthused, telling reporters<\/a> that he preferred to be a starter.<\/p>\n

In the end, he got his wish. Berr\u00edos, Bieber and Yesavage started the season on the IL. Yesavage has since been activated but the Jays have also lost Ponce and Scherzer to the IL. The injuries were enough for Lauer to get a rotation spot, even with Patrick Corbin<\/a><\/strong> being signed to jump into the mix.<\/p>\n

But Lauer\u2019s results haven\u2019t been nearly as good as last year\u2019s. He has made eight appearances this year. Technically, only six of those were starts, as he pitched behind an opener twice. That was something he also wasn\u2019t happy about, per Keegan Matheson of MLB.com<\/a>. \u201cTo be real blunt, I hate it. I can\u2019t stand it,\u201d he said. He added that the switch messed with his habits as a starter.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s due to his routine being messed up or residual effects from batting the flu earlier this year, Lauer has a 6.69 ERA on the season. His 16% strikeout rate and 9.9% walk rate are both significantly worse than last year. His fastball has only averaged 90.4 miles per hour on the year. That\u2019s a big drop from last year\u2019s 91.7 mph, which was on the low end to begin with.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the combination of the poor numbers and Lauer repeatedly going public with his frustrations has prompted the Jays to move on, even though they don\u2019t have an obvious rotation solution and the schedule is about to get tricky. Subtracting Lauer leaves them with Gausman, Cease, Yesavage and Corbin in four spots. It doesn\u2019t appear as though any of the guys on the IL are close to returning, so the club will need to figure out something by next week. They start a series against the Rays tonight, with Gausman, Corbin and Cease lined up. They are off on Thursday but then play 17 in a row after that.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they will opt for some sort of bullpen game and\/or piggyback situation. Spencer Miles<\/a><\/strong> has been pitching reasonably well and went three innings in front of Lauer yesterday, though that would be risky since he is so inexperienced. Miles came into this year as a Rule 5 guy with only 14 2\/3 minor league innings under his belt, none above Low-A. Rodr\u00edguez has starting experience and pitched two innings in his most recent minor league outing. They could call up someone else from Triple-A, with Josh Fleming<\/a><\/strong>, Austin Voth<\/a><\/strong>, CJ Van Eyk<\/a><\/strong>, Chad Dallas<\/a><\/strong> and Grant Rogers<\/a><\/strong> all pitching in the Triple-A rotation at the moment, though no one in that group is currently on the 40-man roster. They could scoop up an external addition, with Chris Paddack<\/a><\/strong> being one starter who just became a free agent.<\/p>\n

Lauer heads into DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Jays could take as long as five days to explore trade interest. Given his salary and recent performance, he probably doesn\u2019t have a lot of trade value.<\/p>\n

If he were to clear outright waivers, he has enough service time to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency while keeping his money. The Jays might skip that formality and simply release him. If that comes to pass, they would remain on the hook for the contract. Any other club could sign him and pay him the prorated league minimum, which would be subtracted from what the Jays pay.<\/p>\n

Barger\u2019s IL placement is frustrating, since he just came off the IL due to a separate issue. He got out to a slow start this year and hit the IL due to a left ankle sprain. He was reinstated off the IL and was only able to play one game before this elbow inflammation has put him right back on the shelf. That\u2019s less than ideal for the Jays as injuries have played a big role in their season so far. In addition to the aforementioned pitching issues, they have seen Barger, George Springer<\/a><\/strong>, Alejandro Kirk<\/a><\/strong>, Nathan Lukes<\/a><\/strong> and Anthony Santander<\/a><\/strong> miss time. Those injuries have surely contributed to a lackluster 18-22 start this year.<\/p>\n

Now that Barger is out again, the Jays will return to having an outfield group consisting of Daulton Varsho<\/a><\/strong>, Myles Straw<\/a><\/strong>, Davis Schneider<\/a><\/strong>, Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez<\/a><\/strong> and Pinango. They just optioned Pinango when Barger got healthy but he has quickly come back. Position players normally have to wait ten days after being optioned before being recalled but an exception is made when someone goes on the IL. Pinango has a .423\/.444\/.462 line this year but with an unsustainable .478 batting average on balls in play, so he\u2019s surely due for some regression.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Nick Turchiaro, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blue Jays announced that left-hander Eric Lauer has been designated for assignment. His roster spot goes to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":789548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[10],"tags":[40935,275852,62,67,132,68,199674,322561],"class_list":["post-789547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-addison-barger","tag-eric-lauer","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-yariel-rodriguez","tag-yohendrick-pinango"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116557972251952881","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}