Article: The Dodgers Cracked the Blue Jays’ Strikeout Code

[Leo Morgenstern]

The Blue Jays aren’t afraid to swing, but they hate to swing and miss. They lead the league in contact rate inside and outside the strike zone. Their hitters only whiff on one out of every five swings. The league average is one in four. That might not sound like a big difference, but it adds up quickly. The Blue Jays will swing more than 11,000 times this year. They’ll make contact hundreds more times than the average team. 

Thanks to their excellent contact skills, the Jays have the lowest strikeout rate in the majors. In fact, they have the lowest strikeout rate of any team in a single season since 2016. Moreover, strikeouts are more plentiful now than they were nine years ago. Compared to league average, the 2025 Blue Jays have the lowest strikeout rate since the 1986 Boston Red Sox, who struck out 11.3% of the time. Funnily enough, the Blue Jays ranked second that year with a 13.4% rate. Next to those low numbers, Toronto’s 17.3% strikeout rate this year doesn’t really seem all that impressive. I assure you it is.

Avoiding strikeouts is a huge reason why the Blue Jays lead the majors in batting average and on-base percentage. It’s a huge reason why they sit at the AL standings with less than seven weeks to play. But if you only tuned in for the Dodgers series over the weekend, you’d have no idea what I’m talking about.

In game one last Friday, the Blue Jays struck out seven times in 35 trips to the plate. That’s a little high by their own exceptional standards, but nothing to stop the presses for. Then came game two.

Blake Snell took the bump for the Dodgers. The two-time Cy Young winner was making just his second start since April and his fourth of the year. By the end of the night, he had turned in the best outing of his brief Dodgers career, striking out 10 of the 21 Blue Jays he faced over five scoreless innings.

The southpaw became the first pitcher to strike out double-digit Blue Jays in a single game at any point this season. Snell, it should be said, is one of the best pitchers in the game. He’s a dominant strikeout artist. But it wasn’t just Snell. After he exited, Toronto’s hitters struck out another four times over the final four innings.

The Blue Jays have a 17.9% strikeout rate against relievers in 2025, slightly higher than their 16.9% rate against starting pitchers. The Dodgers’ relievers struck them out 25% of the Jays they faced on both Friday and Saturday. And it wasn’t over.

Game three saw Tyler Glasnow take the mound for L.A. He might not have Snell’s resume, but if Snell is a strikeout artist, then Glasnow is a strikeout Michelangelo. Lo and behold, he struck out eight Blue Jays in his 5.2 frames of work. 

Even more impressive, however, was the bullpen that struck out six Toronto hitters over the final 3.1 innings of the game. Unlike Snell and Glasnow, it’s not as if the Dodgers' bullpen is known as a strikeout factory. Their 23.5% strikeout rate ranks ninth in MLB. The eight relievers they deployed against Toronto have a 24.7% strikeout rate on the year. That’s good, but not exactly terrifying, least of all for the lineup with the best contact skills in the league.

Yet, by the end of the game, the Blue Jays had struck out 14 times for the second day in a row. Those two contests in L.A. represent their two worst performances by strikeout rate all season. Their overall 31.8% strikeout rate in the series was easily their worst in any series all year. Including those final two games against the Dodgers, the Blue Jays have only played six individual games all year in which they had a higher strikeout rate than they did in that three-game set.

Don’t worry, though. There’s good news. The Blue Jays aren’t broken. After escaping Chavez Ravine, they struck out only twice in Tuesday’s 5-1 victory over the Cubs. It was the ninth time this year they’ve struck out no more than twice in a game. The rest of the league combined has a total of 43 such games. No one else has more than five, and nine teams have none at all.

We also can’t forget the three games that preceded the Dodgers series. In a dominant showing against the Rockies, the Blue Jays struck out just 15 times in more than 150 chances.

In other words, I’m not concerned that the Blue Jays have suddenly lost the magic. Their extraordinary contact skills haven’t disappeared. The Dodgers just got to them, plain and simple. They came up with a strategy (or, more likely, strategies) to neutralize Toronto’s greatest strength. They took advantage, and they took the series. 

So no, I’m not worried about the Blue Jays suddenly losing their way at the plate. But I will say this: If the Toronto and L.A. end up facing off again this season, it will be in a much more important series. And the Blue Jays can’t let what happened over the weekend happen again.

Stats updated prior to games on August 13.

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