Blue Jays free agent target: Nick Pivetta

The Toronto Blue Jays are in the market for a starting pitcher.

Last season, the Blue Jays entered the year with eight starters signed, yet they struggled to remain healthy all season. José Berríos, Shane Bieber, and Trey Yesavage all began the season on the injured list, and it went downhill from there.

If there’s one thing to take away from the 2026 season, it’s that a team can never have too much pitching. The Blue Jays rotation is already solid, featuring Dylan Cease, José Soriano, Trey Yesavage, Cody Ponce, and a few others, but adding a pitcher like Nick Pivetta makes it that much better.

Nick Pivetta’s profile

The Victoria, British Columbia product has spent the past decade in Major League Baseball after he was drafted in the fourth round of the 2013 MLB Draft by the Washington Nationals. Pivetta has spent the past two seasons with the San Diego Padres.

He had a career-best season in 2025, authoring a 2.87 ERA and 3.49 FIP across 181.2 innings of work, with a 26.4 K% and 6.9 BB%. It was such a good season, in fact, that the Canadian finished sixth in National League Cy Young voting.

Unfortunately, the 33-year-old missed the majority of the 2026 season. After just four starts, Pivetta landed on the injured list with a right elbow flexor strain in April. In a rehab assignment in August, he departed a game with an apparent injury, but returned for four more starts in September, as well as a pair of starts in the postseason.

As a whole Pivetta pitched well when healthy. Across his eight starts, the righty threw 34.2 innings of work, with a 2.86 ERA and 2.21 FIP. His strikeout climbed to 30 percent in the limited sample size, while his walk rate dropped to 5.7 percent.

Even with a great season in 2025 and a solid season when healthy in 2026, the Padres declined his club option for the 2027 season, worth $14 million, making him a free agent.

In early November, ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel projected that Pivetta will earn a three-year contract worth $45 million, a higher salary than what he would have made with the Padres. Of course, the Padres may still have interest in the Canadian, perhaps they’ll offer a longer-term deal, but it is interesting to say the least.

Fangraphs’ Steamer projects that he’ll finish the 2027 season with a 4.06 ERA and 3.95 FIP across 108 innings of work, with a 25.3 K% and 7.3 BB%.

Assuming his elbow is fully recovered, Pivetta would slot in as their #2 or #3, depending on where you have Soriano. Adding Pivetta makes an already solid rotation even better, and it helps that he has experience pitching the American League East, spending parts of five seasons with the Boston Red Sox.