What new swing tracking data says about the Blue Jays

From the off-season through the first 41 games of the Toronto Blue Jays’ 2024 campaign, one of the biggest stories surrounding the team has been a lack of power.

The Blue Jays rank 25th in the majors in home runs hit (35), which helps explain why the team has MLB’s 28th-best run total despite above average strikeout and walk rates. While Toronto didn’t enter the year projected to mash homers like the 2021 or 2022 iterations of the team, the Blue Jays have still limboed under modest expectations in the power department.

A new explanation for that phenomenon arrived on Monday in the form of Statcast’s new bat-tracking data. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Blue Jays are not producing many hard swings.

To be specific, just two hitters on Toronto’s roster (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Daulton Varsho) have an average bat speed above the league average of 71.5 m.p.h. — and three rank (Justin Turner, Cavan Biggio, and Ernie Clement) in the bottom-20 league-wide. That trio has combined for a respectable 100 wRC+, but with just seven home runs to their names in 324 plate appearances.

Fast-swing rate might be more instructive as swings over 75 m.p.h. generate a batting average of .307 and SLG of .603 while those slower than that result in a .246 AVG and .369 SLG. The MLB average fast swing rate sits at 24.1 per cent and once again Vladdy excels (52.4 per cent) while Varsho is narrowly above the league standard (28.2 per cent). 

The rest of the hitters on the active roster aren’t coming close to average.

Over the past few weeks, the Blue Jays’ bats have consistently been described as sluggish and it seems like that’s literally true.

That said, Statcast’s numbers show that raw bat speed isn’t everything. As good as they make Guerrero look, for instance, he’s still slugging .391 with a modest ISO of .115. 

One of the reasons is the first baseman’s bat speed doesn’t seem to be squaring up the ball consistently. This is intuitive considering his difficulty with ground balls. An inability to hit the ball on the sweet spot of the bat prevents a hitter from getting close to the theoretical max exit velocity that he could attain based on his bat speed and an incoming pitch's velocity. 

Any swing that achieves 80 per cent of that maximum is now considered ‘squared-up’ by Statcast’s definition and Guerrero’s rate on contact (27.3 per cent) sits well below the MLB average (34.4 percent).

Here are a few more notes on the newly released data:

The Danny Jansen experience

Jansen has generated impressive power production without impressive exit velocity numbers, and he’s currently slugging .667 with subpar bat speed numbers.

The explanation for that seems to be that despite a relative lack of pure power, he finds the sweet spot on the bat and gets the most out of his middling bat speed. 

Jansen is squaring up 40.3 per cent of his contact and he leads the Blue Jays in blast rate on contact (19.5 per cent) — the percentage of his batted balls that are both fast swings and squared up. On average, blasts result in .545 AVG and 1.116 SLG.

Addison Barger shows serious bat speed 

Barger’s first few games in the majors resulted in a .056/056/056 line, but his average bat speed (75.3 mph) ranked 30th among the 461 hitters with at least 10 competitive swings tracked this season.

The 24-year-old looked a bit out of his depth at the sport’s highest level, but he can clearly swing the bat with authority. Whether he’s able to control his violent swing well enough to thrive in the majors remains to be seen, but his .279/.410/.512 line in triple-A is impressive.

Turner finds the leaderboards

These new numbers don’t take a particularly kind view of Turner, but because the data is only available for 2024, it’s unclear if that’s a recent development based on his advancing age.

Whatever the cause of the veteran's lack of bat speed (65.4 m.p.h. on average), he does seem to have a way to compensate for it. Turner’s swing length of 6.4 feet is the fifth-shortest in the major leagues. 

Hitters in that area tend to be pure contact hitters like Luis Arraez, Steven Kwan, and Nick Madrigal. All of this is too new to know how it might affect player projections, but Turner’s low bat speed/short swing profile seems likely to result in strong strikeout avoidance numbers from here on out while his power could disappoint.