Danny Jansen's importance to Blue Jays grows as bat keeps improving

While the Toronto Blue Jays haven’t experienced many pleasant surprises in the opening stretch of 2024, Danny Jansen’s offensive excellence certainly qualifies.

Jansen has a recent track record of producing at a high level at the plate — especially for a player who has a lot to offer defensively behind it — but his early-season numbers are nothing short of spectacular.

The 29-year-old got a late start to his 2024 campaign thanks to a wrist injury, but he’s performed at a superstar level since his debut on April 16.

Shohei Ohtani is the only hitter in the majors with 50-plus plate appearances who has topped Jansen’s impressive wRC+ (199) and slugging (.667) marks.

While he probably won’t keep raking at his current clip, he looks in control at the dish in a way he’s never demonstrated before. Jansen has flashed elite power over short stretches in the past, but he’s never shown the kind of plate discipline he’s exhibiting now.

Jansen’s plate discipline has never been a serious problem for him, but it’s never looked this good — and appears to be stemming from the catcher showing unprecedented restraint against breaking pitches.

While he’s always produced relatively well against sliders and curves, so far in 2024 he’s been impossible to beat with them. So far this season his whiff rate on those pitches is a minuscule 5.6 per cent, a ludicrously low number even in a small sample. In his previous five seasons that mark has never dropped below 20 per cent.

The best explanation for that is he’s done an amazing job laying off pitchers’ pitches. Of the 46 breaking balls he’s seen outside the zone this year, Jansen has only swung at four of them — and one of those swings resulted in a double.

It’s a microtrend, but one that gives a sense of just how locked in Jansen is now, and it’s not difficult to envision the catcher remaining extremely dangerous if he can retain even a little bit of the discipline gains he’s shown in the early going.

FanGraphs’ ZiPS projection system predicts he’ll produce a 137 wRC+ from here on out, an elite number that would’ve ranked 12th among all qualified hitters in 2023. The lowest projection Jansen gets from FanGraphs’ six projection models is 117, which is still excellent

It might be time to start conceiving of Jansen as less of a tandem catcher and more of a legitimate middle-of-the-order bat. Unfortunately for the veteran — and the Blue Jays — there’s a "when healthy" caveat attached to that statement because of his many trips to the injured list in recent seasons. 

Even so, he’s looking more and more like a guy capable of delivering high-level offence and power to a team that lacks both whose other option at catcher has seen his extra-base ability wane significantly in recent seasons.

In the immediate term, Jansen is a critical player for the Blue Jays who deserves to get as many at-bats as the team can feed him thanks to his outstanding production, promising projections, and ability to help paper over some of the club’s current weaknesses.

Looking a little bit further down the road, he’s an absolutely fascinating figure for the franchise due to the fact he’s an unrestricted free agent following the 2024 season.

Not so long ago, the most logical path for Jansen seemed relatively clear. 

When Alejandro Kirk was performing at an all-star level, the fact he was younger and under team control longer than Jansen made him seem like the long-term solution. Meanwhile, it felt fair to presume the former 16th-round pick would seek greener pastures and more playing time in free agency while the Blue Jays got a more traditional backup for Kirk and allocated resources elsewhere.

That could all still come to pass, but the situation has been complicated by Kirk’s offensive decline and the possibility Jansen is finding a new gear. If that makes the Blue Jays want to keep the guy who’s been their best position player on a per-game basis this year, it’s difficult to come up with a reasonable contract.

Since building a new offensive identity around a power-first approach in 2021, Jansen has hit .242/.323/.499 while contributing strong work behind the dish. In just 806 plate appearances he’s hit 46 home runs and produced 7.1 fWAR. FanGraphs estimates the monetary value of those efforts at $56.4 million.

At the same time, Jansen’s relative lack of playing time is more of a bug than a feature. It’s tough to know how to value a player with an extensive injury history entering their 30s and playing the game’s most physically-demanding position. 

Even though no one disputes catchers’ importance, teams have been reluctant to commit to them long-term unless they are superstars. Just 10 backstops are currently playing on contracts of three years or longer. Only eight make $10 million or more per season. Jansen is worthy of a commitment, and getting worthier by the day, but Toronto could remain reluctant to provide one. 

While Kirk has regressed offensively, he’s one of the game’s best framers and a top-tier pitch blocker as well. He doesn’t have to produce much with the bat to be a capable starter, and having him relegated to a pure backup while Jansen returning as a traditional No. 1 option on a sizable contract would be a bit of a waste. At that point a Kirk trade would come into play, but the 25-year-old makes for an odd trade asset.

That’s also true of Jansen considering the juxtaposition between his stellar production and durability worries and could be more of a pressing concern. 

If Toronto becomes a mid-season seller, it would make sense to flip him. The Blue Jays’ catcher surplus has resulted in plenty of trade speculation — and the Daulton Varsho deal —  in recent years, and Jansen has rarely seemed like the right player to move because other teams might be scared off by his injury history or skeptical of his mid-career power surge.

Now things could be changing. 

Although catcher trades tend to happen more in the off-season due to the difficulty of learning a pitching staff on the fly, the plausibility of Jansen carrying significant trade value at some point in 2024 is creeping up. If his performance remains in line with his projections, he could become a big-ticket power bat capable of sliding into a contending team’s DH spot, not just a catcher. 

He could still provide the most value behind the plate, but there’s a big difference between a slightly-above average hitter who plays a single position — no matter how valuable that spot is — and a guy whose production commands that he finds his way into the order. Jansen is currently trending towards being seen as the latter.

For now, the Jansen situation is simple. At a time when some of the Blue Jays’ top hitters are underachieving, they are fortunate that he’s stepping up. Add in Kirk’s rough offensive start to 2024 and Jansen has been a cure for a lot of what ails the Blue Jays since returning to the lineup, or at least someone who’s part of the solution not the problem.

A few steps down the road, things are going to get more complicated. Jansen is simultaneously becoming a better extension and trade candidate at a time when the Blue Jays have credible reasons to be gun shy about choosing either path — particularly if they are in contention when the trade deadline rolls around. 

Jansen is an amazing homegrown player-development story and an extremely valuable two-way contributor. Those characteristics almost always result in extension if the player in question is open to it, but the catcher’s future is still uncertain and the better he plays the cloudier it seems to get.