Please, We Need More Photos of the Blue Jays Striking Out

[Leo Morgenstern]

Dear sports photographers,

I'm incredibly grateful for the work you do. You play such an important role in recording and relating the story of the game. Our website would look lifeless without you. With all that said... I have to make a request.

I need more photos to use when the Blue Jays are struggling at the plate. 

I get it. Hits are more exciting than strikeouts. Moments of celebration sell better than moments of failure. I'm sure hitters aren't too thrilled to have their picture taken as they walk back to the dugout in defeat. But I can't use a photo of a Blue Jays batter getting a hit in an article about how badly their bats have stunk. 

As I write this, the Blue Jays are 7-10. Their offense has struggled. As much as it pains me to cover those struggles, that's what I signed up for. My fellow scribes and I have to write about all the ways this team has disappointed us. The problem? We're burning through images that depict those struggles faster than you're putting them out. 

On Thursday, I published a piece about the team's poor performance with runners in scoring position. That's been a recurring theme throughout the first three weeks of the season. Yet, you wouldn't know it by scrolling through our image service. All I needed was one photo of a Blue Jays batter not succeeding at the plate to use as the featured image. That was a lot harder to find than you'd think. 

This one of George Springer would have been perfect, but I had already used it.

Image courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

I had also already used the images I found of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (here) and Kazuma Okamoto (here) staring into the distance after striking out. Like I said, the Blue Jays have struggled, and we've had to cover those struggles.

Images courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski & Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images

Eventually, after scrolling through pages and pages of pictures of the Blue Jays getting hits, scoring runs, and donning celebratory jackets, I settled on a slightly different shot of Okamoto reacting to the same strikeout. That's how limited my options were. 

It doesn't have to be this way.

I know the Blue Jays don't strike out a whole lot. It's kind of their thing. But that's relative. They may have struck out less than any other team, but they've still done it 117 times this year. That's only 25 fewer strikeouts than hits!

And it's not as if these photos need to be strikeouts. Give me a picture of a batter hitting into a groundout or a pop-up. Give me a one of a swing and a miss. I don't even care if I can see the disappointment on the batter's face. Sure, an evocative facial expression is a plus, but I'm not greedy. All I need is literally any photo of a Blue Jays batter that isn't of him getting a hit or celebrating a hit. They're shockingly hard to find.

To be fair, I found a good number of photos of Blue Jays getting hits in which it isn't explicitly clear that they're getting hits. Could I have gotten away with using this shot of Ernie Clement? Probably. But it wouldn't have felt right. I would have known he hit a single with that swing, and I'm no peddler of misinformation. I left the watermark on, and I left the image out of my article.   

Image courtesy of Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images.

If you still aren't convinced how dire this situation is, let me use Wednesday's game against the Brewers as an example. The Blue Jays' bats failed to capitalize on a great outing from Dylan Cease, losing 2-1. They went 5-for-30 with no extra-base hits. Their 35% whiff rate (21 whiffs on 60 swings) was their highest in any game so far this season. Despite that highly disappointing offensive showing, there wasn't a single picture from that game I could use as the header for this article. Our image service gave me 48 pictures from game day, including shots I certainly never needed to see of Easton McGee, Aaron Ashby, and Trevor Megill stretching in the bullpen.

Images courtesy of Mark Hoffman-Imagn Images.

There were two images of Blue Jays batters I could choose from for the entire game. One was Guerrero hitting a single. The other was Okamoto drawing a walk. But I needed more than just images of success when the clear story of the game, at least for Toronto's offense, was failure.

On top of that, I also found an image of Brewers pitcher Chad Patrick reacting in distress to what turned out to be a fly out. That raises a whole other issue. It's never hard to find images of pitchers looking disappointed. There are so many of them that you can even find pictures of pitchers looking like they failed when they didn't! What is it about pitching failures that compels photographers so much, when it seems like many of you wouldn't capture a hitter's failure with a ten-foot lens?

Look at this portrait of Eloy Jiménez. I used it recently for an article about his call-up. Jiménez was about to play his first MLB game since September 2024. The photographer, John E. Sokolowski, captured the moment perfectly.

Image courtesy of John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images

Look at the sheer joy on his face. All I'm asking for is the occasional photo that captures a similar degree of disappointment. I don't want to have to use those photos, but until the Blue Jays start playing better baseball, I don't have much of a choice. We're getting dangerously close to me having to photoshop this George Springer frown onto his teammates' faces. I don't want to do that, and I know you don't want to see it.  

So please, baseball photographers, I'm begging you. Your writer and editor friends need more pictures of hitters looking discouraged, defeated, and downright despondent. The only alternative is asking the Blue Jays to play better baseball, and, well, I'm trying to be realistic here.

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