TORONTO — Now that the first month of the season is behind us, what do you make of the Toronto Blue Jays?
Following injuries to Teoscar Hernandez, Hyun-Jin Ryu, and Danny Jansen, the likes of Zack Collins, Santiago Espinal, and Ross Stripling have stepped up to produce. And despite a schedule including heavy doses of Yankees, Red Sox, and Astros, the Blue Jays kept winning. Now 15-8, they’re 1.5 games behind New York in the AL East standings.
“To do that against these teams has been great,” bench coach John Schneider said late last week. “We’re doing little things well that are keeping us in games and winning some games.”
But even after a successful opening month, there’s plenty of work ahead. And as we attempt to anticipate what’s next, various questions start to surface. Among them: what aspects of the Blue Jays’ strong start are sustainable? And what’s more likely the product of small sample randomness? Understanding what’s real is important for any team, since playing-time decisions and roster moves hang in the balance. Not that the Blue Jays would necessarily frame things that way.
“We’re not evaluating anything other than how can we help and are there opportunities to tweak,” GM Ross Atkins said in a recent interview. “We’re not evaluating, ‘Is player A now player B? Do we have a new player?’
“It’s about finding opportunities for growth and development and much less so to assess some type of value,” Atkins continued. “Don’t get me wrong. There may be a time that you have to (assess), but for the past three months all of our energy and focus for each of these individuals has been on ‘how do we find opportunities to support them.’”
Fair enough. But while the Blue Jays work internally to support their players, we can do some evaluation from the outside looking in. Starting with the pitching staff, let’s try to determine what’s real and what’s not after one month of games…
PITCHING
Team stats: 3.68 ERA, 8.6 K/9, 0.9 HR/9, 2.6 BB/9, 205.1 innings, 12 saves
Something sustainable: Kevin Gausman striking out more hitters than innings pitched, the break on Adam Cimber’s slider.
Not so sustainable: Gausman’s season-long walk-less streak, Jordan Romano’s current pace of 92 games pitched.
The world of pitching can get incredibly granular at times, with high-speed cameras and precisely-measured spin rates contributing to pitch design across the game. But if you’re looking for a big-picture indicator as to how things are going, you don’t need to get too complicated.
“Really it’s just strikeout to walk,” said Matt Buschmann, the Blue Jays’ bullpen coach and director of pitching development. “At the end of the day, it’s are you getting ahead and are you putting guys away when you’re ahead.”
On that front, the Blue Jays are off to a reasonably strong start with a 16.0 percentage point gap between their team strikeout rate of 23.0 per cent and their walk rate of 7.0 per cent. That ranks eighth in MLB, though the sample size is still small enough that Gausman has yet to walk a batter and Yusei Kikuchi is walking nearly one per inning.
Eventually, those numbers will stabilize, but in the meantime, the Blue Jays are getting granular instead of judging pitchers on stats like ERA. Buschmann and pitching coach Pete Walker monitor the shape of each pitch to ensure it’s breaking the way they want it to. Adam Cimber’s slider, for instance, has gained vertical break is a development the Blue Jays consider encouraging. Now, it’s a matter of locating those pitches where Toronto’s pitchers want them.
“You first start with ‘are you getting the shape’ and then as you feel good with the shape and how you’re throwing it, it’s are you getting it there,” Buschmann said. “We’d like to have it all happen at once, but usually it’s a step-by-step process.”
HITTING
Team stats: .243 average, .304 OBP, .410 SLG, 31 HR, 92 runs, 4.00 runs per game
Something sustainable: Zack Collins’ power, George Springer’s .921 OPS.
Not so sustainable: Zack Collins’ .381 batting average on balls in play, Bo Bichette’s slow start.
The Blue Jays’ offensive numbers look underwhelming until you consider the overall offensive environment in baseball this season. Offence is down league-wide, and in that context the Blue Jays are actually hitting a little above league average with a wRC+ of 106 that ranks seventh in the American League.
“Relatively small sample size still in terms of how guys are hitting the ball, where guys are hitting the ball, how we’re swinging it as a group,” Schneider said. “We’re happy with where we are knowing that we haven’t really clicked on all cylinders offensively. But we’re happy with the way we’re preparing, deploying and the outcome so far.”
In this case, performance is easy to assess. With one look at the stats, we can say who’s done well — Vladimir Guerrero Jr., George Springer, Zack Collins — and who hasn’t — Bo Bichette, Raimel Tapia, Alejandro Kirk. But let’s zoom in here.
Moving beyond performance to some underlying metrics, the Blue Jays are monitoring things like exit velocity, chase rate, and contact point (where the hitter connects with the ball). Combined with the eye test, they help the Blue Jays find opportunities for improvement.
Those metrics suggest there’s something real behind some of their early-season successes. With an average exit velocity of 94.2 m.p.h., Collins is well above league average when he connects. At the same time, he’s striking out 41.3 per cent of the time — basically as often as Joey Gallo — and those numbers can be revealing even in small samples. In brief: there’s legitimate power here but those strikeout numbers are concerning and we should expect his .256 batting average to drop.
Like Collins, Espinal has been making consistently hard contact. He’s set a new career high in max exit velocity this year (106.9) while also pushing his average exit velo up to 89.5 m.p.h. In this case, the numbers support the spring training narrative: that after an off-season spent building muscle, he has legitimately boosted his power ceiling at the plate.
On the other hand, there’s Bo Bichette. The numbers aren’t there for Bichette, who has had some trouble against fastballs this year after doing all kinds of damage against velocity a year ago, when he hit 29 home runs and led the American League in hits. Realizing that, pitchers are challenging Bichette with more hard stuff than ever. Early on, the results weren’t there — either with traditional stats or advanced, underlying numbers.
But sometimes hitters just slump. And they’re never going to look good while they’re slumping. Internally, the Blue Jays believe Bichette’s slow start is more blip than trend since whatever the numbers say, the bat speed and coordination that made him an all-star a year ago haven’t gone anywhere. Over the weekend, Bichette made consistently good contact culminating in a game-changing home run Sunday, so he may be turning that corner as we speak.
DEFENCE
Team stats: 11 errors (MLB average: 12), 13 defensive runs saved (MLB average: 3), .694 defensive efficiency (MLB average: .702)
Something sustainable: Santiago Espinal’s defensive ceiling.
Not so sustainable: Error-free baseball from Matt Chapman and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Going by the eye test, the Blue Jays appear to be an improved defensive team. With Guerrero Jr. gaining comfort at first base, Springer making diving plays in right and centre, Matt Chapman at third, and Bradley Zimmer adding late-game outfield defence, they’re a stronger group than they were this time last year.
Objectively, the numbers back that up, as the Blue Jays rank second in the American League with 13 defensive runs saved. Driving some of that progress has been Alejandro Kirk and Santiago Espinal, two up-the-middle players now taking on bigger roles with the team.
“Kirk’s been awesome,” said Schneider, who works closely with the team’s catchers. “He’s always been really good and I think he’s gotten more comfortable with his surroundings in the big-leagues and everything we’ve been asking of him. His talent is just coming out. He’s been nails, man.”
After 124 innings behind the plate, Kirk has allowed just one wild pitch and no passed balls, a testament to his improved receiving. Plus, his framing has been better, especially low in the zone.
“That’s real,” Schneider said. “What he’s doing so far defensively is definitely real and I think the offence is going to come, but you can’t fake being good for as many pitches in a row that he’s been good.”
The same goes for Espinal. Whether he continues making highlight reel plays at this rate is an open question, but what he’s done so far reflects an underlying ability that’s here to stay.
“That’s 100 per cent real,” Schneider said. “When we had him in spurts last year, it’s like ‘OK, that’s really good.’ The numbers show already he’s tops in the league at that spot. He’s an elite defender for sure.”
That doesn’t mean errors aren’t coming. They are. defence can slump, too. But having seen the defensive ceilings of Kirk and Espinal rise a little, there’s reason to believe this team’s improved defence is no fluke.