Evaluating the Blue Jays' Offense Using the New Statcast Data

Last week, Baseball Savant released a new subset of bat tracking data to the public for the first time. MLB teams have had access to this kind of information for years, but now, fans everywhere can find out the exact distance between the ball and the bat on every single swing and miss since the 2023 All-Star Game. At the player level, it's also possible to determine the vertical and horizontal position of the bat relative to the ball at intercept, as well as the timing of the swing down to the millisecond.

Owen Hill recently did a wonderful job providing a primer on these metrics here at Jays Centre. With the Blue Jays offense down in the dumps so far in 2026, I felt it was worth a deeper look at what the new data can tell us about the position players in particular.

As a certified baseball nerd, I was excited to see these numbers come out, but I've been struggling more than I had hoped to best understand how to use them. Most of the content that's been posted about them has had to do with pitchers, and I feel like that might be by design. They don't appear to be correlated with any results at the hitter level, and while having access to bat position and timing helps strengthen our knowledge of swing geography and everything that goes into getting bat on ball, these data points tell us absolutely nothing about a hitter's ability to drive the ball.

Pitchers inherently have way less control over how hard or far the ball goes than hitters do, so this new info accounts for a larger portion of the things that are directly within their control compared to the hitters. Still, it's part of the "why" for both sides, and there's still utility for these numbers on the hitter side on a case-by-case basis. Here are the things you need to know about bat positioning, timing, and the Toronto Blue Jays' offense in 2026.

Team

Before I get to individual players, there are a couple year-over-year trends I wanted to highlight at the team level. Jays hitters' miss distance is up this year on off-speed pitches (changeups & splitters) compared to 2025, meaning that on average, they're missing them by more when they swing. They made a killing in October by damaging fastballs, but they were the best offense in the league against secondary pitches in the regular season, and their regression on that front has contributed to their hitting woes this year.

Blue Jays Bat Positioning vs Off-Speed, 2025-26 (Statcast)

As a squad, flailing at these pitches has been the main problem (ideally, they'd be centered, with the other end of the extreme being tied up). It's not so much that they're flailing more, but the distance they're missing by when they do is higher. 

Blue Jays Bat Positioning vs Breaking, 2025-26 (Statcast)

Their miss distance is also up against breaking balls – that is, sliders, sweepers, curveballs, and anything else with spin. As part of this rollout, MLB introduced a stat called perfect contact rate. A perfect swing is centered both horizontally (between tied up and flailed) and vertically (between over and under), as well as on time. A season ago, the Blue Jays had the very best perfect contact rate of any team in baseball against breaking pitches. This year, they've fallen to the middle of the pack. In all three dimensions, their swings against breaking balls have gotten worse. 

Players 

George Springer has been turning a corner in his past 25 at-bats or so, but his OPS is still in the mid-.600s, a steep drop from where he was in 2025. Breaking it down by pitch type shows he's been late more often on fastballs (four-seamers, sinkers and cutters), specifically on 20% of his swings, up from 17%. That's a difference of only 3%, but the distribution in many of these categories is quite small. If he maintained his late swing rate of 17% this year, for example, he'd be about 80 spots and 20 percentiles farther toward the other side of the leaderboard.

Simultaneously, Springer's early swing rate on off-speed pitches has increased from 35% to 38%. He's later on fastballs and earlier on off-speed stuff, a classic example of that "in-between" phrase we hear hitters and broadcasters use so often to describe timing issues.

George Springer Swing Timing, 2025-26 (Statcast)

Meanwhile, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has been getting under fastballs at a higher clip (28%) than last year (22%). I first mentioned this in last week's Shape of the Blue Jays column: For all the issues Guerrero has had consistently lifting the ball over the years, his 8.2% popup rate would be the highest of his career, and his popup rate against fastballs specifically hasn't been this high since 2023. It's important to remember that pure home run-hitting sluggers are trying to get a little under the ball because damage is not possible without lift. For instance, Aaron Judge and Yordan Alvarez get under fastballs more than almost every hitter in the game.

Despite that, I don't think Guerrero is better when he's under the ball, given his unique high-raw power, high-contact, low-launch angle profile. Tampa's Yandy Díaz is his closest comp in that respect, and he is among the league laggards in under percentage against the fastball. The Cubs' Nico Hoerner doesn't have anything close to Guerrero's bat speed, but he's another bat-to-ball guy with a low attack angle that is almost never under fastballs and has been a consistently productive hitter for years.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Vertical Bat Position on Fastballs, 2025-26 (Statcast)

Only 14 qualified hitters in the majors have swung over top of breaking balls more frequently than Davis Schneider this season (45% of swings). Some of the most extreme swing-and-miss guys across the league are ahead of him on that list, including Will Benson, James Outman, and Matt Wallner, while Munetaka Murakami is right behind him. This trend probably warrants further investigation, although not all the hitters on that list are over by an egregious distance on average. Schneider's under percentage on fastballs is also up from 40% to 49%, which aptly summarizes how the swing-and-miss issues have bottomed out for him. As I'm writing this, he's currently laying waste to the Red Sox, so hopefully he continues to make good on his second chance at the big leagues in 2026.

Davis Schneider Vertical Bat Position, 2025-26 (Statcast)

The advent of precise miss distance tracking illustrates what Nathan Lukes does so well at the plate. In 2026, his average miss distance on fastballs is the lowest of any current Blue Jay at 0.8". Against off-speed pitches, it's somehow even lower at 0.7", which is quite impressive considering that the average miss distance on off-speed stuff is about 2" more than on fastballs. It will probably regress toward the mean once he plays more games, but it's a feat nonetheless. Only Myles Straw and Lenyn Sosa have a smaller miss distance against breaking balls. This all indicates that his contact ability might be the most sustainable of the many bat-to-ball weapons the Blue Jays have and speaks to the quality of at-bats he puts together for this lineup.

Nathan Lukes Miss Distance, 2025-26 (Statcast)

I was initially surprised to see that Ernie Clement currently ranks inside the top 40 qualified hitters in terms of the percentage of swings he takes against off-speed pitches that are vertically lined up (the sweet spot between over and under). This happens on 81% of his swings on those pitches. The fact that he loves to hunt fastballs to pull in the air while also getting on plane so well against changeups and splitters, which are often used to neutralize hitters looking for velocity, is another example of what makes him such a tough out. He also does a great job minimizing flawed swings against the off-speed, which can often make hitters look silly. Flawed swings are the antithesis of perfect contact: Not centered horizontally, lined up vertically, or on time.

Ernie Clement vs Off-Speed Pitches, 2025-26 (Statcast)

Another way to use this data is as an additional point of reference to evaluate the swing quality of switch-hitters by handedness. Brandon Valenzuela, for example, has a long swing geared for pull-side power from the left side while being a little more compact from the right side. Both versions of him have been above-average at the plate overall, and when judging his swing based on bat position and timing, it's interesting to see how his left-handed swing is quite vulnerable to breaking balls, while he doesn't seem to have that problem from the right side. Given his success against changeups this year, I wonder if righty pitchers will try to surprise him with more breaking balls than we've seen thus far.

Brandon Valenzuela Swing Quality by Handedness (Statcast)

I'm tempted to take matters into my own hands and take a more extensive look at how these numbers translate to results for both hitters and pitchers, given the depth of the data. The quality of publicly available information on Baseball Savant continues to impress, and it's never been a better time to be a statistically informed fan. All the metrics cited in this article can be found here.

All stats entering June 16, 2026.