Shape of the Blue Jays: Cease, Guerrero, Gausman

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.

Quick Hits: Prospects

• When Eric Lauer was designated for assignment on Monday, Yariel Rodríguez was recalled to take his spot on the active roster. The immediate plan for that fifth spot in the rotation seems to be a piggyback situation with Spencer Miles and Rodríguez, but John Schneider also mentioned CJ Van Eyk and Chad Dallas, two starters with the Buffalo Bisons, as internal candidates to fill the role.
• Van Eyk, 27, is a former second-round pick from the 2020 draft. The righty has a 3.13 ERA through seven starts in Triple A so far. He has a 30° arm angle and sits 93 mph with his four-seamer. He makes use of seven different pitch types, with a low-80s two-plane curveball standing out from a results standpoint in 2026 (.163 xwOBA, 43.5% swing and miss). To lefties, he has been throwing his four-seam, curveball, cutter, and changeup each between 19% and 28% of the time. To righties, his approach centers around his cutter and curveball, with a sinker and sweeper as secondaries. He'll also mix in the odd gyro slider. Van Eyk is an arsenal-over-stuff guy who won't blow anyone away but thrives as a called-strike machine.
• Dallas, 25, was taken in the fourth round in 2021 and recently returned from an elbow injury that sidelined him for the entire 2025 season. This year, he has a 3.60 ERA in seven appearances (six starts) for Buffalo. He has a more over-the-top delivery and a very unique profile. Like Van Eyk, his fastball sits around 93 mph, but his calling card is a monstrous sweeper that generates around 17" of glove-side action, a rarity for someone with a higher-than-average arm angle. From a stuff perspective, his 12-6 curveball and low-90s cutter are also plus pitches that are instrumental to his strategy against lefties. In 2026, he's using the sweeper 44% of the time to righties.

Dylan Cease

Toronto's big signing from the offseason is on a heater, going seven innings in each of his past two starts after going that distance only twice last year. It appears the Blue Jays are making good on their vow to help Dylan Cease add to his repertoire, and it's paying off in a big way. Last Friday (7 IP, 0 ER, 5 H, 10 K, 0 BB), he put the Angels in a blender by coming out with distinct approaches each time through the order. In the early innings, he frequently called upon his changeup and sinker to supplement the primary fastball-slider combo. The second time through, his slider usage shot up to 45%, giving the Angels a healthy dose of spin before he hit the gas in the later innings. His four-seam usage was up to 43% his third time through, averaging 99 mph in the seventh inning as he moved back off his slider, using it and the knuckle curve on a near-interchangeable basis.

On Wednesday against the Rays (7 IP, 1 ER, 3 H, 9 K, 3 BB), Cease used his four-seamer just 30% of the time against lefties, his lowest single-game mark of the season so far. Instead, he pushed his knuckle curve and sinker in those matchups more than he has all season. Overall, his walk rate is still hovering around 10%, but we're seeing in real time just how unhittable a starter becomes when he combines nasty stuff with a polished arsenal. Cease's 2.2 fWAR now ranks second among all qualified starting pitchers. This is a Cy Young frontrunner.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hasn't recorded an extra-base hit since he doubled on April 28 against Boston, a career-long drought. His .381 OBP is now outpacing his .372 SLG, and he's slashing just .116/.235/.116 in the month of May. It's hard to feel optimistic about the offense when he's hitting like this. When he has struggled in the past, he has usually underperformed his expected numbers thanks to an inconsistent ability to lift the ball. Not only is he not lifting this year, but his 55th-percentile hard hit rate would be his lowest since his rookie year in 2019. Besides that, he has never finished a season with a hard-hit rate worse than the 89th percentile.

Part of the reason this is happening is that he's chasing more. Last year, Guerrero showed the best plate discipline of his career, swinging at only 21.5% of pitches outside the zone. This year, that number is up to 30.3%, above league average and the highest we've seen from him since 2022. The last time I gave him a segment in this column, I noted that the league was pitching him differently in the wake of last postseason, which is still true. He hasn't seen such a lack of pitches in the zone since 2019, and the amount of hittable fastballs and changeups he's getting has dropped precipitously compared to 2024 and 2025. Last year was a perfect storm: He saw more in-zone fastballs and chased less than he ever had. We're still waiting to see how he'll counter.

Kevin Gausman

The Blue Jays' Opening Day starter became the sixth active pitcher to reach 2,000 career strikeouts on Monday against Tampa, a testament to how well his contract has worked out for both sides as we progress through its final year. Still, he got tagged for six earned runs on 10 hits across 4.2 innings. Kevin Gausman hasn't looked quite as sharp in recent outings as he did to start the year; part of the story on Monday was bad luck (the Rays hit .435 against him with an xBA of .290), but even by expected batting average, it was his second-worst outing of 2026. The Rays put six lefties in their lineup, which makes it fascinating that Gausman only threw his signature splitter 33% of the time in those matchups, a new season low...which surpassed the low he previously set last week, also against Tampa.

He threw them a ton of four-seamers instead, which may seem counterintuitive given the Rays' lineup has the flattest average swing path in MLB. Flat swings are usually good for making contact and slugging against high fastballs, but they can be vulnerable against low secondaries. However, I think this was intentional. Eno Sarris of The Athletic noted on his podcast last week that at the time, the Rays were 30th in MLB in weighted value against four-seamers because most of their hitters don't catch them out in front, leading to a lack of power. Theoretically, locating four-seamers down in the zone against them as Gausman did on Monday would lead to a lot of swings over the top of the ball. Yet, he got burned on plays such as a pair of weakly hit singles by speedster Chandler Simpson and a well-placed groundball single by Richie Palacios. He only gave up two extra-base hits the entire outing. Both were barrels hit by lefties, and both came on fastballs that missed in - you guessed it - the upper part of the zone. That's baseball!

Gausman's Four-Seam Location vs LHB - Catcher's View
5/11/2026 vs TB (left) and 2026 overall (right)

All data from Baseball Savant and FanGraphs, as of May 14, 2026.