The Blue Jays Are Good? Yes, the Blue Jays Are Good (Part 2)

Welcome back! The first half of the 2025 season is nearly over, and no, your eyes aren't deceiving you, the Blue Jays really are in first place in the AL East. I understand this must be a disorienting experience for many, so I'm here to help. I've put together a detailed guide to explain how and why the Toronto Blue Jays have been consistently winning baseball games.

If you're just joining us, I highly recommend checking out part one of this series, in which I introduced the concept and wrote about the individual players who have been most critical in helping the Jays exceed expectations. Today, I'm turning my focus to a few larger team-wide trends. 

The stats and rankings in this article were updated prior to games on July 9.

The Blue Jays Don't Strike Out
The Blue Jays have had more success scoring runs than preventing them, both throughout the season and during their recent hot streak. Their offense ranks ninth out of 30 teams in runs scored per game, while their pitching staff and defense have allowed more runs to cross the plate than all but nine other teams.

As the bats have powered the Jays to the top of the AL East, their defining trait has been how rarely they swing and miss, and, for precisely that reason, how rarely they strike out. The Blue Jays have done well at limiting strikeouts for several years, but the 2025 team is taking that approach to a new level.

The Blue Jays have the highest rate of contact per swing and the lowest rate of strikeouts per plate appearance in the majors this season. In fact, they have the lowest strikeout rate of any team in a single season since the 2017 (World Series-winning) Astros. 

Still not sufficiently impressed? Toronto's strikeout rate is about five percentage points lower (i.e., better) than the league average. If you're not sure what to make of that number, just trust me – five percentage points is a lot at the team level. The Blue Jays' 2025 strikeout rate, as compared to the league average strikeout rate, is one of the 10 best in MLB history since the turn of the 20th century. Not the 21st century, the 20th. 

To state the obvious, avoiding strikeouts is a good strategy. The Blue Jays really aren't that special when they put the ball in play. They rank in the middle of the pack in almost every statistic that measures quality of contact. However, they make contact so often that their offense is still comfortably above average. 

Here's the downside: A contact-oriented approach is, by nature, a streakier approach. Singles and doubles are less predictable than strikeouts and home runs. That means teams that make a lot of contact, but not necessarily high-quality contact, are prone to hot streaks and slumps. We saw such a slump in April, when the Jays lost 11 of 17 games over the last three weeks of the month. They barely averaged three runs per game. 

Fortunately, we're seeing the opposite right now. 

Don't Ignore the Defense
Preventing runs matters just as much as scoring them, and pitchers can't prevent runs all on their own. Yet, I've found that fans, analysts, and, heck, even a lot of teams don't value defense as highly as they should. Thankfully, the Blue Jays aren't one of those teams.

Defense has been a top priority in Toronto for years. It's why the Jays traded their first-ranked prospect for Daulton Varsho in 2022. It's why they took on Andrés Giménez and Myles Straw from the Guardians when plenty of other teams would have called their contracts bad money. It's why they extended Alejandro Kirk in March, even though he was coming off two consecutive down years at the plate. It's why they've kept coming back to Tyler Heineman as a backup catcher. 

And it's paying off.

The Blue Jays place first among all teams in the comprehensive defense metric Fielding Run Value (FRV). They also rank within the top five in Outs Above Average (OAA) and Defensive Runs Saved (DRS). That's despite the fact that Varsho and Giménez, arguably their two best defenders, have each missed significant time this year with injuries. 

Toronto's pitching staff doesn't look all that impressive right now. That's something general manager will have to address ahead of the trade deadline on July 31. Nonetheless, a mediocre group of pitchers that lacks both depth and top-end talent hasn't hurt this team nearly as much as it could have. That's thanks to all the defenders – including Varsho, Giménez, Straw, Kirk, Heineman, Ernie Clement, and Addison Barger – who have kept runners off the bases and runs off the scoreboard. 

Elite contact skills have helped the Blue Jays gain leads. An impenetrable defense has helped them stay ahead. However, the Jays are still facing a long road between where they stand now and where they need to be to reach the playoffs. They have no shortage of questions to answer over the final months of the year. Will their surprise contributors continue exceeding expectations? Can a streaky offense become a little more consistent? Is the defense strong enough to compensate down the stretch if the pitching staff doesn't improve?

I don't have the answers. All we can do is wait and see. Baseball is always hard to predict, and the Blue Jays especially so. Yet, I'm a heck of a lot more confident in this club than I was just a few months back. That brand new feeling in your gut? It's called optimism. The Toronto Blue Jays, yes, those Toronto Blue Jays, are a good baseball team. Let's enjoy it for as long as it lasts.