By the Numbers: What Spring Training Stats Could Mean for the Blue Jays This Season

Baseball has always been a numbers game, Almost every baseball fan can tell you the importance of Jackie Robinson's number 42, or Cal Ripken Jr. and the number 2,131, or Joe DiMaggio and the number 56. Players establish their Hall of Fame credentials by reaching certain career numbers as well: 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, or (once upon a time) 300 wins, almost guarantee you a plaque in Cooperstown. The Blue Jays have their own set of famous numbers throughout history. First and foremost: 1992 and 1993. The number 32 is the only one hanging from the rafters in the Rogers Centre. Then there's 727,819: the record-setting number of Loonie Dogs eaten at the Rogers Centre in 2024.

This spring, the Blue Jays have been putting up some impressive numbers, the most notable being 15, the number in the win column during spring training. Even if John Schneider and company aren't chasing the Golden Grapefruit as they claim, it's still nice to see the wins piling up for a team that will need a lot of them in order to make the 2025 season a success.

As Schneider knows, spring training numbers don’t necessarily translate into the regular season, but as spring goes on and sample sizes get a little bit larger, we may be able to learn a few things. Let's take a look at five numbers that may mean something going into the season.

Number One: 54.8%
That would be Alejandro Kirk's hard-hit rate (during games in Statcast-enabled stadiums). It's leaps and bounds higher than anything we’ve seen from Kirk in his career, and it makes the nice spring that Kirk is putting together, an OBP-heavy .306/.366/.417 slash line, look even more encouraging. Kirk has been showing signs that an offensive resurgence could be in the cards this season.

Number Two: 250
That's how many strikeouts the Blue Jays have notched so far this season. This is a very welcome sight to see! In 2024 Blue Jays pitchers ranked 24th in baseball. This spring, they're in third place, both in total strikeouts and on a per-inning basis. Most notably, Max Scherzer has struck out 14 in his nine innings of work, while Chris Bassitt, Jose Berrios, Bowden Francis and Yariel Rodriguez are all in double digits. Yimi García and Jeff Hoffman have nine and eight strikeouts respectively. The Jays pitchers struggled in a lot of ways last year, but if they are able to rely on the strikeout more this season it’ll go a long way to helping a pitching staff and particularly a bullpen that was subpar last season.

Number Three: 4
This is the number of home runs Bo Bichette has hit this spring. Notably, it is also the amount of home runs that Bo Bichette hit during the entire 2024 season. The re-emergence of Bichette this spring has got to be a delight to all parties involved. From 2021 to 2023, Bichette was a routine 20-homer player, but the power numbers fell off a cliff amid an avalanche of injuries. It's not just the home runs either. Bichette's spring wOBA sits at .445 after a paltry .264 in 2024. Bichette is currently running an average exit velocity of 93.2 mph. That's not a sustainable number going into the season, but it's an excellent sign after he averaged 89.2 mph last season. If the Bo Bichette the Jays get this season looks anything like this slugger with the sharp new haircut, it would represent the best-case scenario for all parties.

Number Four: 25
That's the number of plate appearances Alan Roden made this spring before he struck out for the first time. Roden's claim to fame as a prospect has always been his ability to run exquisite walk and strikeout rates, and this spring he's walked twice as often as he's struck out! Twenty-five straight PAs without a strikeout is impressive for anyone, but especially for a guy without a single major league plate appearance to his name. Roden is slashing an absurd .391/.545/.739 so far this spring. Real impressive, and a forceful case for Roden to break camp with the big club.

Number Five: 20
This is how many more strikeouts than walks the trio of Hoffman, García and Chad Green have registered so far this spring. Remember last year, when the Blue Jays had the worst bullpen in franchise history? That's surely not going to be the case this year. All three of these pitchers have been dynamite so far in spring. García in particular has looked excellent, throwing six innings and allowing only two hits while striking out nine and walking nobody at all. In 2024, the Blue Jays lost 35 games that they had at one point led. This has got to give the team confidence, knowing that if the starter gives them six quality innings, this trio will be ready to slam the door.

We'll end with one last reminder that spring training stats come and go, and once we get into the dog days of summer, very few of us are going to remember what happened in Dunedin. But it's worth keeping these in mind as we get closer to Opening Day and we do our best to prepare for the season to come. If the regular season is anything like spring training, the Blue Jays will be in good shape.