Blue Jays unveil position player-heavy roster ahead of wild-card series vs. Twins

The Toronto Blue Jays have announced which 26 players they'll go to battle with at Target Field in their wild-card series against the Minnesota Twins.

Most of the decisions were intuitive ones, but the Blue Jays had some choices to make around the margins — and it seems the team is prioritizing offensive flexibility as Toronto's roster includes 14 position players and 12 pitchers.

Players excluded from the expanded 28-man September roster are Hyun-Jin Ryu and spot starter Wes Parsons — who replaced Jay Jackson on the team for Sunday's regular-season finale.

Ryu didn't have an obvious role in a three-game series. He wouldn't have been in line to make a start and had limited use as a soft-tossing southpaw in a bullpen with plenty of options from the left side. Parsons never would've been considered for a spot.

The team kept all of the position players it ended the season with, including pinch-running specialist Cam Eden, who stole 53 bases on 57 attempts at Triple-A in 2023. Eden is unlikely to take a single at-bat against the Twins, but the team clearly values what he could bring to the late innings of a close game on the base paths.

Davis Schneider and Santiago Espinal were other position players who could've conceivably been left on the roster as the former ended the season on a significant cold streak and the latter had a down season overall.

Schneider's power and Espinal's versatility have value, though. The rookie may have broken out of his funk on Sunday with two doubles, and the veteran has picked this up at the plate, hitting .341/.372/.462 in September while splitting time at three infield positions.

Espinal also has a strong track record of hitting lefty pitching in his career (111 wRC+), while Schneider will be the club's best power threat off the bench.

If one of that pair, or Eden, had been excluded from the roster the Blue Jays would've been able to carry 10 pitchers beyond their three scheduled starters, but Toronto appears to be satisfied with a nine-man bullpen that includes Yusei Kikuchi — who flashed dominant stuff as a reliever in 2022 with a 39.8% strikeout rate in 18.1 innings.