Shape of the Blue Jays: Cease, Varsho, Hoffman

[Matthew Creally]

Welcome to Shape of the Blue Jays, my column where I dig into Statcast numbers to analyze recent pitch shape and swing shape trends for Toronto Blue Jays players and discuss how they have impacted their performance. Click here to read the last edition.

All stats entering July 9, 2026.

Quick Hits: Draft

• The 2026 MLB Draft starts this Saturday. The Blue Jays won't be on the clock until the 39th overall pick, and so much can happen between picks 1 and 38 that it isn't worth putting too much time into predicting the exact player they will select. However, Baseball America's draft preview podcast gave us some intel as to where they could be headed.
• BA's Carlos Collazo noted the Jays have had a particular affinity for players who are young for the class in their past few drafts. The acquisitions of Arjun Nimmala and JoJo Parker also indicate a liking for hit-first high school shortstops. As such, another high school hitter would make sense. Collazo listed shortstop Connor Comeau (BA's 55th-ranked draft prospect), third baseman Bo Lowrence (38), Archer Horn (51), James Clark (52), Landon Thome (57), and Taj Marchand (66) as the most logical fits for the Jays' first pick. He also mentioned Will Adams (88) as a candidate for Toronto later on.
• All the players listed above are high school prospects, and every one of them except for Marchand is a lefty hitter. All except for Lowrence and Adams profile as shortstops at the moment, while Horn has potential to be selected as a two-way player.

Dylan Cease

On Wednesday afternoon, Dylan Cease authored one of the best starts in franchise history, falling three outs short of a no-hitter in San Francisco (8+ IP, 0 R, 1 H, 11 K, 3 BB). Since returning from the IL, Cease has been money, with a 1.73 ERA and a 39.2% K rate in six starts (36 IP). He leads qualified AL starters in FIP and fWAR and is second to Cam Schlittler in ERA. Remember all the concerns about the gap between his results and peripherals in 2025? This is why baseball executives don't care about ERA.

On an overall basis, Cease's usage patterns weren't out of the ordinary. The story was his pitch selection with two strikes. He used a higher percentage of changeups (22%) in two-strike counts than any other start this season against a Giants lineup that featured five lefties. The majority of these two-strike changeups went for balls, but of the four that were swung at, three were put in play for weakly-hit outs, and the other was missed. Even when it wasn't putting batters away, it was inducing harmless balls in play, which are imperative if you're going to try to throw a no-hitter. This was a statement conclusion to the first half for Cease, who is on the short list of candidates to start the All-Star Game for the AL next week in Philadelphia.

Daulton Varsho

Daulton Varsho got on the board with two hits against the Giants in the series finale, but he's still just 5 for his last 39. His wRC+ on the season is down to 99 after the early-July dry spell, and he's on pace for the second-lowest fWAR total in his four years as a Blue Jay. Earlier in the season, I was ambivalent about the series of adjustments he made to improve his bat-to-ball skills, but it's absolutely fair to question whether any of it was necessary given how he's tailed off the past couple weeks. Varsho's running the lowest strikeout and whiff rates, and the highest BABIP, of his career. However, he's on pace for just 14 home runs; he's never hit fewer than 18 in a full season and has been a mediocre hitter after hitting 20 homers in 71 games last year.

Varsho is a notorious tinkerer, having changed various aspects of his swing every year since getting traded to Toronto. Hindsight is always 20/20, and there's still half a season to go, but it seems like a bold move to rework things in a contract year after how it all came together for him in 2025, which was the first time he was a threat to hit the fastball in a Blue Jay uniform. His xwOBA against fastballs has dipped back below .300 in 2026, thanks in part to him being late on 8% more of his swings against fastballs compared to last year. A 2.8-mph reduction in bat speed undoubtedly has something to do with that. Hitting involves constant adjustment, but is the increase in bat-to-ball worth it given the decrease in power?

Jeff Hoffman

You don't need me to remind you that on May 31, with the Blue Jays three outs away from climbing above .500 for the first time since April 3, Jeff Hoffman played a large part in blowing a 5-1 lead in an eventual walk-off loss in Baltimore. Did you know that since then, Hoffman has given up one earned run, struck out 15, and walked five in 13.2 innings? Some of this is positive regression. After posting BABIPs of .538 and .500 in April and May, which prompted an ominously-titled article from Davy Andrews at FanGraphs, his BABIP dropped to .160 in June and a pristine zero in July. At the same time, by xwOBAcon, the quality of batted balls he has given up has decreased over the past six weeks as well.

Interestingly, Hoffman's arm angle has steadily climbed throughout the season, going from 30° in April to 35° in July as he has slightly raised his release point. This has allowed him to kill the vertical break on his slider, which is making it play up even though he's not throwing it any harder than usual: In his two July outings so far, the slider has garnered a ridiculous 83% swing-and-miss rate. According to the Stuff+ model on FanGraphs, four of Hoffman's five highest-ranked appearances sorted by Stuff+ on his slider have come in the past three weeks as this change has subtly taken effect.

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