Article: Can Nathan Lukes Help the Blue Jays With Their Righty Woes?

[Leo Morgenstern]

The Blue Jays have struggled terribly against right-handed pitching this season. With his home run on Tuesday, Nathan Lukes showed how he can be a small part of the solution.

 

Last week, Nathan Lukes had a baby. On Tuesday night, it was his turn to deliver. The center fielder crushed a Ronel Blanco curveball into the right field bleachers. It was his first home run of the season and the first by a Blue Jays batter in 177 plate appearances. It would also turn out to be the only run Toronto could push across the plate against the Astros in a 5-1 loss. 

All things considered, Toronto isn’t asking a lot of Lukes. He typically bats eighth or ninth in the order. He hasn’t had to face a left-handed pitcher all season. All he really has to do is keep center field warm until Daulton Varsho is ready to return. At that point, he’ll most likely head back to Triple-A. Still, it would be terrific for the Blue Jays and their struggling offense if Tuesday’s home run was a sign that Lukes is heating up.  

Lukes took 91 trips to the plate in 2024. He was one of Toronto's most productive bats from his call-up on August 30 through the end of the season. The Jays weren't playing for anything but their dignity at that point, but Lukes helped make a rough stretch more watchable. He hit .303 with an .818 OPS and a 132 wRC+. His .326 xwOBA was more good than great, but his bat-to-ball skills looked legit. He struck out in fewer than 10% of his plate appearances, and his whiff rate (14.8%) and expected batting average (.284) both would have ranked above the 90th percentile if he had anywhere close to enough playing time to qualify. 

His numbers looked even better – albeit in an even smaller sample size – if you only considered his performance against right-handed pitching. The lefty batter went 21-for-64 with the platoon advantage, drawing eight walks to just six strikeouts. His .871 OPS against righties ranked second on the team last year, behind only Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Keep the tiny sample size (77 PA) in mind, but Lukes flashed real productivity at the plate. 

It’s not as if his hot bat came out of nowhere, either. Lukes had hit .333 with a 135 wRC+ in 54 Triple-A games before his call-up in 2024. He looked just as good the year before, hitting .366 with a 146 wRC+ in 48 Triple-A contests. Since the start of the 2023 season, only two players (minimum 100 PA) have a higher wRC+ for the Buffalo Bisons: Spencer Horwitz and Alan Roden.

Lukes performed well enough at Triple-A and in his brief MLB cameo to earn some solid offensive projections entering 2025. The Steamer projection system at FanGraphs envisioned a 107 wRC+. The ZiPS projections were even more optimistic, forecasting a 109 wRC+. Like every other number I’ve mentioned in this piece, take those projections with a grain of salt. Small sample size affects projection systems too. They can only work with the information they have, and in Lukes’s case, they didn’t have much MLB data at their disposal. All the same, his offensive projections were encouraging. A capable center fielder who provides above-average offense from the bottom of the order is a valuable piece to have around. 

Four weeks into the season, those projections have only gotten better, despite Lukes's .200/.306/.333 slash line. His rest-of-season ZiPS wRC+ is up to 112, while his Steamer wRC+ is up to 113. Don't get too excited – this has more to do with the projections adjusting to the 2025 offensive environment than anything Lukes has done himself. That said, his .332 xwOBA is significantly better than his .290 wOBA. His .287 xBA is much more impressive than his Mendoza-flirting .200 batting average. He has drawn as many free passes (walks + hit-by-pitches) as strikeouts. So, in spite of his mediocre results this year, there’s a lot to like about what we’ve glimpsed from Lukes. He is seeing the ball well, hitting the ball well, and deserves better results than he has achieved. Perhaps the projection systems agree.

Lukes isn’t going to be the solution to this team's offensive woes. He’s not going to make up for key players like Anthony Santander and Alejandro Kirk slumping at the plate. Still, he might have the skills to be a valuable contributor in a part-time role. And the Blue Jays can use all the help they can get from the left-hand side.

You might be surprised to learn that the Blue Jays' offense has been quite dominant against left-handed pitching this year. Their .384 OBP against southpaws is the best in baseball, while their .806 OPS and 140 wRC+ both put them among the top three teams. Against right-handed pitching, however, they rank among the bottom 10 teams in all three triple-slash categories. Their .621 OPS puts them third to last, while their 83 wRC+ is 17% worse than league average. That's bad. 

Hopefully, things will get better as the year goes on. The lefty-batting Varsho will be back on the field soon enough. That will help. The switch-hitting Santander can't possibly continue to slump this badly. He's bound to bounce back. That would help too. But the Blue Jays can't count on time to fix everything. Their struggles against right-handed pitching aren't just bad luck. They are a direct result of the way this roster was constructed. Three of the top four hitters on the team (Guerrero, Bo Bichette, and George Springer) bat from the right side. Other than Santander and Lukes, their lefty-batting options include the soft-hitting Andrés Giménez and inexperienced youngsters Roden, Will Wagner, and Addison Barger. This team was always going to be weaker against right-handed pitching. Even so, they have to be better than they've been so far. They need someone, ideally multiple someones, to step up.

Luke doesn’t need to be the hitter he was last September. He doesn’t need to be the hitter he was at Triple-A in 2023 and '24. But if he can come anywhere close to meeting the projections that saw him as an above-average platoon bat, he could make a meaningful difference for this offense against right-handed pitching – perhaps even enough of a difference for him to stick in the majors when Varsho returns.

View full article

[Terminator]

Many smart people are saying this

Great article Leo

[Terminator]

Well would you look at that