Shape of the Blue Jays: Cameron, Bieber, McAdoo

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 August 21, 2026, unless otherwise stated.

Quick Hits: JoJo's Journey Continues

• A couple of weeks ago, JoJo Parker got to celebrate his 20th birthday by getting called up to High-A Vancouver. He has started well, and the helium continued to pick up yesterday, when he went 3-for-4 with 2 doubles.
• In seven games with the Canadians, Parker is slashing .346/.452/.500 for a 159 wRC+. He's striking out 23% of the time, walking 13% of the time, and has stolen three bases. Perhaps even more encouraging is the fact that the underlying numbers also suggest he's continuing to see the ball well, even against tougher pitching. His strikeout rate at Single-A Dunedin was 25% in 87 games earlier this season. His contact rate in Vancouver so far is 78%, the same as in Dunedin.
• Parker was extremely selective in his first taste of pro ball, chasing just 23% of the time in the FSL and swinging at only 57% of pitches in the strike zone, which works out to an overall swing rate of 39%. That has increased to 52% with the Canadians. We don't have Statcast data for High A, but it's reasonable to assume he's seeing more pitches to hit and he isn't missing a beat so far. 

Daz Cameron

Daz Cameron has seized his latest big league opportunity in his three games with the Blue Jays (4-for-11, 1 double, 1 HR). In Thursday's rubber match against the Rays, he clobbered the team's farthest home run of the season by someone other than Kazuma Okamoto, sending an Ian Seymour changeup onto one of the catwalks at Tropicana Field.

He began his season in the KBO. Prior to that, he spent time with three different MLB franchises from 2020 through 2025. A fringy hit tool and high strikeout rates have kept him from being productive at this level, but he's a different hitter than he was in his last stint on this side of the Pacific. It's an incredibly small sample, but swing-and-miss has not been an issue for Cameron so far with the Blue Jays, and for a lineup that needs slug, his combination of a high-end average bat speed (74.2 mph) and a short bat path (6.8' average swing length) is very intriguing. 

He's also adjusted his batting stance, standing at an angle of 29° open per Statcast, compared to 15° open with Milwaukee last year. His hands are no longer tucked behind his head pre-load, and the offset between his front and back foot has widened.

Daz Cameron Batting Stance, May 2025 (right) vs August 2026 (left)

Shane Bieber

Shane Bieber delivered an outstanding performance to help the Jays win their first series at Tropicana Field since September 2023. He tossed seven innings of one-run ball, striking out a season-high seven without issuing a walk. With 101 pitches, he topped the century mark for the first time since his Tommy John surgery. He has completed seven innings twice this season, and it happened against the Rays both times.

In his previous start against the Yankees, Bieber threw his four-seamer a season-high 49% of the time. He maintained that trend against Tampa Bay. The Rays have struggled against fastballs this season, and he successfully exploited that during his first trip through the order, when he threw the pitch half the time. The second time through the order, he upped the usage on his knuckle curve (44% CSW rate in this game) and slider (three whiffs on five swings) to great effect, before leaning on the changeup the third time through (three whiffs on six swings, 50% CSW rate, 29% zone swing, 57% chase).

This was vintage Bieber: pounding fastballs to start the game, putting the other team in swing mode, and making them look foolish on the secondaries later on. The stuff isn't going to wow anybody, but he was constantly a step ahead of the Rays thanks to his command and elite sequencing. Here's a fun fact: Bieber's six walks in his past four starts have still yet to surpass the total from his six-walk clunker in Washington right before the deadline. He has a 2.96 ERA and 22 strikeouts in that span (24.1 IP).

Shane Bieber Swings and Misses, August 20 vs Tampa Bay (Statcast)

Charles McAdoo

Charles McAdoo has been a sparkplug since his return to the big leagues, hitting for a 215 wRC+ in the month of August entering Thursday. However, a dose of reality may be on its way. He's running a .343 BABIP this season, and while the hit tool has improved (leading to an above-average line drive rate), he hits the ball in the air a lot and has been susceptible to popups, making his elite speed less likely to have a positive effect on his batting average. The projection models at FanGraphs are unanimously predicting a below-average rest-of-season wRC+ from him.

That being said, I still feel he has a good shot at outperforming those because he's becoming more of a power threat. McAdoo has eight batted balls with an exit velocity of at least 100 mph so far in his Blue Jay career. Five of those have come within the past week. Projection systems like ZiPS do not capture the effects of in-season changes to a hitter's mechanics. Since getting recalled from Buffalo earlier this month, his attack angle has increased by 4° (again, not ideal if you want to skirt your way to a high BABIP with grounders and speed, but good for power) and his average point of contact has shifted nearly 3" further out front toward the mound.

Like Cameron, he has that high bat speed & short swing combo that new-age hitting coaches love. The changes in his attack angle and intercept point have translated to more batted balls at ideal angles for him to tap into the power he has, and this has been another chapter in his evolution as a big-league hitter: He reined his swing in to focus on making more contact earlier this season in the minors, raising his floor and getting him a promotion to Toronto. Now, he's beginning to learn to balance that with the pop he has always had. A 215 wRC+ isn't sustainable, and he's done all of his hitting against lefties, but he has what it takes to continue thriving as another righty-hitting option for John Schneider's club.