Around this time last year, Cody Ponce was sitting on the couch with his wife, Emma, debating what path he should take with his baseball career. He’d just completed three seasons in Japan’s NPB, and the options for his next step were down to Korea or independent ball in North America.
Getting back to MLB was not in the cards for Ponce at the time, but that was his ultimate goal.
“I still wanted to be there and play against the best,” Ponce said on Tuesday night during an introductory Zoom call with Toronto media. “This kind of all happened.”
A lot has indeed happened for Ponce over the past year. The 31-year-old right-hander decided to head to Korea to pitch for the Hanwha Eagles and ended up winning the KBO MVP award after posting a truly dominant season.
That, in turn, forged a path for him to re-enter the big leagues as Ponce signed a three-year, $30-million deal with the Toronto Blue Jays last week.
Ponce was warm and modest during a 30-minute virtual conference that covered a range of topics. He talked about how being around his brother-in-law, San Francisco 49ers star tight end George Kittle, helped him rediscover his “inner child,” a mindset shift that translated into results on the mound. He spoke at length about his Star Wars fandom — his favourite film in the franchise is Episode III – Revenge of the Sith — and also mentioned the impact his wife has had on his career.
“There are a lot of things that changed from playing in Japan to going to Korea,” said Ponce. “We just kind of doubled down on each other and she kind of tripled down on me and was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to go out there, we’re going to have fun. We’re going to enjoy this experience. You’re going to be healthy. We’re going to do everything that we can off the ball field so that way, we could perform on the ball field.
“And the off the ball field stuff was just being able to relax a little bit more, to be a family, to be able to enjoy time.”
Blue Jays teammates give glowing review of city, fanbase
Emma travelled between the U.S. and Japan during her husband’s tenure in Japan, but the couple was together for Ponce’s entire season in Korea. They recently welcomed their first child, a daughter, and their family was a determining factor in which MLB club he chose to sign with.
Ponce spoke with Blue Jays right-hander Bowden Francis and outfielder Myles Straw about the environment that the organization provides for the families of players and came away impressed.
He was also impressed by what he saw from the Blue Jays during the playoffs.
“The competitive nature of the team, the atmosphere that you could see on the bench during games, everybody was very light-hearted, but everybody was still very dedicated to wanting to win a ballgame each and every single night,” said Ponce. “Every team goes out there wanting to win. Nobody wants to lose. But the way everybody did it on that team, it looked like a lot of fun to me when I was watching and that is something that I like to be a part of, of a team having fun.”
Ponce befriends former Blue Jays ace
Ponce chatted with John Schneider earlier on Tuesday and says the manager’s message to him was to be himself and not to change a thing. Obviously, the competition will be stiffer in the majors than it was in the KBO, but if Ponce can come anywhere close to replicating his 2025 success, the Blue Jays would be thrilled.
The six-foot-six, 255-pound right-hander was dominant from start to finish, tallying a 17-1 record along with a 1.89 ERA over 29 starts and 180.2 innings. He set the league’s single-season strikeout record with 252 and the single-game record with 18.
“He was playing a video game last year,” Eagles teammate Ryan Weiss told MLB Network Radio recently. “He was picking [a pitch] and it would go exactly where he wanted it to.”
Ponce credited Weiss, along with Eagles teammate and former Blue Jays left-hander Hyun Jin Ryu, for helping him transform on the mound.
“One of the big things I learned from them both was to not just throw one type of off-speed pitch, but, you know, two types of cutters, two types of curveballs, two types of changeups, creating different pitches and just pitchability,” he said.
“(Ryu) allowed me to kind of understand, ‘Hey, you don’t always have to throw your 0-2 curveball in an 0-2 count. You can throw that in a 0-0 count, and you can also throw an 0-0 curveball in an 0-2 count.’ So, the versatility of pitches allowed me to broaden my spectrum.”
New Jays starter just wants to win
Ponce also improved his conditioning and put on muscle, which has helped his fastball improve a tick to sit around 96 m.p.h. He pairs that with a nasty changeup that contributed to an absurd 36.2 per cent strikeout rate last year.
The Pomona, Calif., native was drafted in the second round by the Milwaukee Brewers in 2015 and broke into the big leagues with the Pirates. He posted a 5.86 ERA over 55.1 innings in Pittsburgh across the 2020 and ’21 seasons but is now a completely different pitcher than the one whose struggles prompted him to move overseas.
Ponce is not entirely sure whether he’ll be a starter or reliever for the Blue Jays, yet it makes sense that the club would seek to keep him in the rotation to continue building on his newfound success.
He’s fine with either option.
“I want to win baseball games,” said Ponce. “I want to win the World Series. So, anything that I can do to be the best help that I can to this team, that’s what I’m going to do.”
