Shape of the Blue Jays: Smith, Soriano, Okamoto

[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 September 10, 2026, unless otherwise stated.

Quick Hits: Dubious History

• It has not been a banner year offensively for the Blue Jays. In Wednesday afternoon's rubber match against the Athletics, they became just the second visiting team to get shut out at the hitter-friendly Sutter Health Park in 2026.
• Starting on the mound for the A's was right-hander Brady Basso, a reliever by trade. It was his 23rd appearance of the season, but only his fifth start. Entering Wednesday, he had completed three innings in a single game just once this season, and as a starter, he hadn't gone longer than 2.1 IP since 2024. He threw four shutout innings against the Jays, striking out four.
• The 2026 Blue Jays are now averaging 4.0 runs per game. That would be the sixth-worst single-season mark in their 50-year history, according to Stathead. The only five years in which they were worse than that all occurred between 1977 and 1981, the first five seasons of their existence. Their highest winning percentage in that timespan was .414 in 1980 (67-95 record).
• Remarkably, they still have a shot at the playoffs thanks to their pitching, but there's no sugarcoating how limited their potential seems to be, and how hard it is to watch, when this is how they hit.

Josh Smith

The Blue Jays knew they weren't getting a power bat when they traded for Josh Smith, or so they thought. Through 21 games with his new team, he's hitting for a 173 wRC+ with five homers and a .366 ISO. That won't last forever, but the surprising production has helped offset the 31.4% K rate he's posted with Toronto. By no means is he a high-bat-speed guy, but in August, 15.8% of his batted balls were barrels, the highest single-month barrel rate of his career. His barrel rate is 11.1% for the month of September so far. If that holds, it would be his first time with a barrel rate of 10% or higher in consecutive months.

This is mostly the result of an apparent effort to lift and pull the ball more often. When he's at his best, Smith's true calling cards at the plate are contact ability, discipline, and efficient contact (i.e., a high squared-up rate). His pull-air rate was high in his best seasons, but in 2026, including his time with the Rangers, his attack angle is up to 13° (+4° year-over-year), and his attack direction is 6° toward the pull side (+4° pull YOY). Since coming to the Jays, his swing tilt has slightly increased as well. The intent of going back to being a pull-air guy is paying off.

José Soriano

It seemed inevitable that José Soriano would throw fewer four-seamers after getting traded to the Blue Jays, and that's exactly what happened. The trend continued on Tuesday night, when he threw his sinker 49.4% of the time in his start against the A's (7 IP, 2 R, 6 H, 3 K, 1 BB). That's a new single-game high, eclipsing the previous mark he set last month in a home start against the Red Sox. He threw it a whopping 70.4% of the time on the first pitch.

The gap between his sinker and the rest of his pitches on the chart above starts to widen almost exactly at the start of his Jays tenure. The logic of throwing a ton of first-pitch sinkers is sound; it's his best shot at throwing a strike with a shape that isn't as vulnerable to damage. Public stuff models have mixed opinions about whether his sinker is that much better than his four-seamer, but opponents are slugging .512 (.509 xSLG) on the four-seamer compared to .358 (.427 xSLG) on the sinker, the latter of which has a 66.3% groundball rate. Odds are that a first-pitch sinker from Soriano is either going to be a called strike or beaten into the ground, which seems like a good strategy with Toronto's infield defense. That's how you go deep into games.

Kazuma Okamoto

Kazuma Okamoto crushed his 30th home run of the season in Sacramento this week, becoming the first (and he will be the only) Blue Jay to reach that milestone in 2026. He's now sitting at a 111 wRC+ in his first year as a big leaguer, outperforming the contract he signed in January. His hit tool has been more fringy than expected, leading to some whiplash-inducing ups and downs throughout the year, but the power has made up for that. There isn't much to complain about in terms of the overall results.

Among all hitters with at least 200 batted balls this season, Okamoto's 28.4% pull-air rate ranks inside the top 20. At the same time, nearly a third of his homers have landed on the right side of straightaway center. I'm impressed by the fact that his swing tilt has steadily increased with each passing month.

For one, tilt is tough to adjust year-over-year, let alone in-season. High-tilt guys are also usually exploitable with high fastballs, but despite a 30% whiff rate on four-seamers, Okamoto is hitting .288 and slugging .554 against the pitch (+15 RV). Unless he goes through a colossal slump in the final weeks, his rookie season should go down in the minds of fans as a relative success.

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