Toronto Blue Jays health update on pitcher Yimi Garcia

A recent 40-man roster review put it bluntly, getting Garcia back for a full season would change the feel of this relief group. The catch is that 2025 never really got rolling for him before injuries shut the door.

When Garcia did pitch, the results were solid enough to matter. He appeared in 22 games for Toronto, logging 21.0 innings with a 3.86 ERA, 25 strikeouts, and a 1.19 WHIP.

The timeline is the part that still stings. Toronto put him on the 15-day injured list on May 24 with a right shoulder impingement, and after he returned, he threw one inning on July 2 before another injured-list stint.

This season ultimately ended after an elbow procedure in late August to clean up scar tissue, and it was not Tommy John surgery.

That detail matters because it keeps the 2026 outlook from feeling like pure wishful thinking.

As a Jays fan, I just want one boring season of relief pitching where the ninth inning does not feel like a coin flip.

The front office clearly expects leverage innings to be a strength, not a nightly adventure.

Toronto signed Garcia to a two-year, $15 million deal last winter, and a healthy version of him is supposed to be part of that bet paying off.

Here's the tricky part with the roster squeeze, you cannot build a pen on «maybe.» If Garcia is right, he lengthens the bridge to the closer and pushes everyone into cleaner roles, which usually turns close games into wins.

My take is Toronto should treat him like a bonus high-leverage arm, not the single key that fixes everything.