{"id":551857,"date":"2026-02-03T07:37:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T07:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/551857\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T07:37:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T07:37:23","slug":"mlb-announces-alejandro-kirk-honor-ahead-of-7th-blue-jays-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/551857\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB Announces Alejandro Kirk Honor Ahead of 7th Blue Jays Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> catcher Alejandro Kirk has had a successful career in Major League Baseball<\/a>. He has played in 564 games across six years in the majors, slashing .268\/.345\/.398 with a .743 OPS, totaling 51 home runs and 263 RBIs. Kirk has been selected to a pair of All-Star Games and won one Silver Slugger Award in his career.<\/p>\n

Kirk, a native of Tijuana, Mexico, was an international signing of the Blue Jays and made his debut in the major leagues in 2020.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old backstop had his best season with Toronto in 2025, and he was a big part of the Blue Jays’ run to their first World Series in over three decades.<\/p>\n

\"Toronto<\/p>\n

Toronto Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk (30) hits against the Los Angeles Dodgers.\u00a9 Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

(\u00a9 Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images)<\/p>\n

Kirk played 130 games during the regular season in 2025, batting .282 with an OPS of .769, hitting 15 long balls and 76 RBIs, both of which were career high numbers.<\/p>\n

The two-time All-Star was even better in Toronto’s postseason run. He started all 18 of the Blue Jays’ playoff games at catcher, slashing .254\/.349\/.493 with an .842 OPS. Kirk mashed five homers and drove in 13 runs.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

On Monday, MLB<\/a> announced the top 10 catchers in the majors heading into the 2026 season, according to votes from fans. In this list, Kirk was honored as the No. 3 player at his position in all of baseball.<\/p>\n

“The fans have spoken, Cal Raleigh is your No. 1 catcher in 2026!” MLB’s caption read.<\/p>\n

Kirk came in behind Seattle Mariners<\/a> catcher Cal Raleigh and Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> backstop Will Smith, who ranked in the top two spots. This announcement from MLB came after Kirk was ranked the No. 5 catcher heading into 2026 by MLB Network’s ranking system, The Shredder.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays catcher will be entering his first season of the five-year, $58 million contract<\/a> extension he signed this offseason.<\/p>\n

With Toronto’s pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training in Clearwater, Florida, on Feb. 11, Kirk and the Blue Jays will begin their Grapefruit League play on Feb. 21 against the Philadelphia Phillies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related: Bryce Harper Honor Announced Ahead of 8th Phillies Season<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Athlon Sports<\/a> on Feb 3, 2026, where it first appeared in the MLB<\/a> section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toronto Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk has had a successful career in Major League Baseball. He has played…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[3426,5,377,2554,3297,774,57,19,4,1451,25,65,15680,1414,282,70,2553,1535],"class_list":["post-551857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-blue-jays","tag-alejandro-kirk","tag-baseball","tag-blue-jays","tag-bluejays","tag-cal-raleigh","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-network","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-silver-slugger-award","tag-the-blue-jays","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-torontobluejays","tag-will-smith"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116005559132703503","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}