Article: Do the Blue Jays Have the Right Stuff+?

[Jim Scott]

What does the Stuff+ say about the Blue Jays pitching staff?

Some pitches are nasty: Nolan Ryan’s fastball, Randy Johnson’s slider, Mariano Rivera’s cutter, Sandy Koufax’s 12-6 curveball. But until recently, there was no real statistical measure of “nastiness”.Fans would talk about velocity, and generally about movement, but such discussions were largely subjective. The technology did not exist to allow for precise measurements.

But in recent years, technology has allowed us to quantify all the aspects of a pitch, a group of sabermetricians took advantage of advances in baseball technology to develop a new metric called Stuff+. The definition below is from a FanGraphs’ primer on the new metric.“stuff+”.

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Stuff+ looks only at the physical characteristics of a pitch. Important features include, but are not limited to, release point, velocity, vertical and horizontal movement, and spin rate. A pitcher’s secondary pitches are defined based on their primary fastball — with “primary” defined by usage in an outing — and so are judged by velocity and movement differentials along with raw velocity and movement numbers.

 

There are some important takeaways from this definition. First, velocity is not everything.A major league batter can hit a 100-mph fastball, if that fastball is laser-straight and without deception. And second, that the effectiveness of a pitcher’s secondary pitches is highly dependent on their fastball. An 88-mph changeup thrown by a pitcher with a 93 mph fastball might not be as knee-buckling as the same pitch when it follows a 98 mph fastball.

Stuff+ is not the only advanced stuff metric out there. Different teams, training facilities, and websites all have their own models, but it's our focus for this article.. Stuff+ was developed in conjunction with Location+, which measures (surprise, surprise) a pitcher’s ability to locate pitches, and Pitching+, which puts Stuff+, Location+ and other variables together to determine the overall quality. So what do these stats say about Blue Jays pitching?

Let’s start with 2024. Here is a chart (courtesy of FanGraphs) of Blue Jays’ stuff+ in the 2024 season:

Some context: a score of 100 in any stat is league average, and the higher the number, the better. In 2024, Chris Bassett’s changeup (79) was below average, his curve (100) was exactly league average, and his slider (107) was above average.

In terms of individual pitches, the highest stuff+ for a fastball is Jared Koenig of Milwaukee with a score of 153. Yimi García’s score of 136 was seventh-highest in baseball. Not surprisingly, most of the top fastball scores were earned by relievers, who can give full effort over a shorter time. The highest slider was some fellow named Paul Skenes, with a 155 score (García’s 147 was fourth-highest). And the highest curve was Matt, passed-on-by-the-Jays-in-the-draft-to-take-Jordan-Groshans, Liberatore, with a 151.

Some interesting (and largely predictable) observations on the Blue Jays ratings:

• In terms of raw stuff, Yimi García leads the Jays pitchers. No surprise, a 97-mph fastball (136 Stuff+) makes his 86-mph slider (147) all the more effective. And locating his well (103 location+) gives him an excellent 134 Pitching+.
• Nate Pearson had excellent stuff poor control (hardly a revelation).
• Kevin Gausman was the anti-Pearson. His stuff last year was not great, but his location and pitching savvy were.
• Jays pitchers are no fools. Chad Green had a 108 Stuff+ on his slider and a 101 on his fastball, but only an 81 on his cutter. Guess which pitch he used less than 1% of the time in 2024.
• Brendon Little’s knuckle curve really is that good. Its 126 Stuff+ ranks fifth in baseball.

And now, let’s look at 2025. The usual caveats about small sample size still apply this early in the season, but one of the real benefits of stuff metrics is that they stabilize very quickly.

Some observations:

• Brendon Little’s knuckle curve is as good as ever. It had a 134 Stuff+ in 2023 as well. But he is struggling with control. His Location+ of 85 is less than his 2024.Hopefully not another Pearson situation.
• García continues to impress, with a combination of stuff, location, and smarts.
• Mason Fluharty, like Little, is showing good stuff but poor location.
• Hoffman is showing above-average stuff on three different pitches, strong location judgement, and good pitching smarts. The stats say that he is for real!
• Easton Lucas’s stats indicate that the sub-1.00 ERA he posted at the beginning of the season might be a mirage. Unfortunate, but hardly unexpected.
• Bowden Francis is struggling. Not only is his Stuff+ down (sinker 102 in 2024, 88 in 2025; curve 107 in 2024, 91 in 2025), but his Location+ has decreased from an above-average 103 to 97. Hopefully only early-season rust.
• And even though Max Scherzer’s early season stuff (in a tiny sample) was well below his standard, he was still good with location and an overall good pitcher. If (big if) he comes back healthy and his stuff returns to anything close to his 2024 levels, he will be pitching at a no. 3 starter level and could easily be the best no. 5 starter in baseball.

The Bottom Line
No single statistic is perfect, and no single statistic tells the whole story. But advanced stuff metrics give teams (and fans!) valuable information. Case in point: in 2024, Brendon Little used his knuckle curve 31.8% of the time. So far in 2025, he has used it 37.8% of the time. And his Stuff+ has actually increased despite the more frequent usage, from 126 to 134. It will be very interesting to see how these new stats affect team decisions – pitching, trading, development, and drafting – in years to come.

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[ian]

Good stuff