The Blue Jays are digging into their farm system for pitching depth, and the name that popped up is CJ Van Eyk. Toronto selected his contract from Triple-A Buffalo, officially setting him up for his first big-league look, with right-hander Chad Dallas getting optioned down in the corresponding move to open a 40-man spot.
Blue Jays Select CJ Van Eyk t.co/QXR6R1uMTf
This isn't a fresh-faced draft pick showing up early. Van Eyk is 27 years old, and the Jays took him in the second round back in 2020 out of Florida State, where he was a legit ace for the Seminoles. The path from there to now hasn't been smooth — he needed Tommy John surgery after the 2021 season, and that kind of layoff changes a pitcher's trajectory more often than not.
The stuff that made him a second-rounder hasn't fully come back. His fastball sits around 92.9 mph and he's mixing in six different pitches this year, leaning most on the four-seamer, cutter and curveball. But his strikeout rate has stayed modest since the surgery, and scouts have already penciled him in more as a potential long reliever than a rotation piece going forward.
Still, the underlying numbers at Buffalo were good enough to earn the trip. Van Eyk posted a 3.79 ERA with a tidy 7.6% walk rate across 78 1/3 innings this season, showing the kind of strike-throwing control that keeps a fringy prospect relevant even after his bat-missing ability declined post-surgery.
None of this makes Van Eyk a top prospect — he's unranked in Toronto's top-30 lists — but that's exactly why this call-up matters. It's the story of organizational pitching depth, not a blue-chip arrival, and with the trade deadline stretch bearing down, that's precisely the kind of low-cost, controllable arm contenders lean on to survive a long summer.
Whether Van Eyk sticks as a multi-inning bullpen option or gets squeezed back out the moment the Jays need a fresh arm remains to be seen. But for a guy who lost a year and a half of development to elbow reconstruction, just getting the phone call is the win.