Shape of the Blue Jays: Yesavage, Okamoto, Miles

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: ABS

• Brandon Valenzuela went a perfect 3-for-3 challenging ball calls behind the plate in Wednesday's series finale against the Red Sox. He also homered in the contest as an added bonus.
• One month into the ABS era, the Blue Jays have been one of the better teams in baseball at using the challenge system to their benefit when they're fielding (this is entirely thanks to their catchers; no Toronto pitcher has challenged a call yet). Statcast uses a model to predict the challenge probability of a given pitch based on location, number of challenges remaining, runners on, the count, and the number of outs in the inning. Based on that model, the Jays are 13th out of 30 in overturns above expected. They are eighth out of 30 in run value gained from their overturns above expected. Valenzuela has proven to be a very adept defensive catcher to start his MLB career; he and Tyler Heineman are doing a good job getting extra strikes for their pitching staff.

Trey Yesavage

Last year's postseason hero returned to action on Tuesday against Boston, and it was a resounding success (5.1 IP, 0 ER, 4 H, 3 K, 0 BB). Trey Yesavage didn't record his first strikeout until the fourth inning, a stark contrast to the copious amounts of swing-and-miss he generated last October, but he didn't walk anyone and induced tons of weak contact. Of the 17 batted balls he allowed, only one had an expected batting average over .500. Only three were hard hit (>95 MPH exit velocity). The average xBA of those 17 batted balls was a meager .160. The best one was a first-inning double by Willson Contreras, which, even though it technically qualified as a barrel, was not hit high enough to be a home run in any MLB stadium. There's no problem with a lack of swing and miss if the balls in play are that non-threatening.

Nothing about Yesavage's velocity was out of the ordinary, and the movement on both the fastball and splitter was also standard. If I have one question about his outing, it's about the lack of his signature "wrong-way" slider. He threw it just six times, five of them to righties. Now, it was responsible for one of his three strikeouts, but was it a lack of feel for it coming off the injury or a deliberate part of his gameplan? He threw it frequently during his last rehab start, so I'm inclined to say the latter. His next start is scheduled for Sunday in Minnesota. They've been a very good slider-hitting team this year, but then again, not many sliders in this league move like Yesavage's.

Kazuma Okamoto

Kazuma Okamoto struggled mightily to put bat on ball and drive in runs in the first couple weeks of his career. He finally had a huge day on April 19 in Arizona with a home run and a double (this was the day the Jays put up an eight-spot in the first inning). Since the start of that game, he's hitting .265, slugging .559, and only striking out 28% of the time, way down from the dangerous low-40s territory he was occupying earlier. What changed?

Most of Okamoto's initial problems had to do with secondary pitches. Eno Sarris of The Athletic noted that he recently changed his stance in such a way that it gives him more time to detect pitch types while also putting him in a better position to cover the outside half of the plate. His hot streak is no accident.

Oh that's fun. Last week on the podcast, we pointed out that Kazuma Okamoto was whiffing mostly on outside stuff, compared to Munetaka Murakami, whose whiffs are all over but more pitch type based. Now he's moved back (5 in) and closer (2 in) which should both help w/ whiffs. pic.twitter.com/ontvlJmQAN

— Eno Sarris (@enosarris) April 28, 2026

This doesn't automatically mean Okamoto is still going to get to every down-and-away slider he sees, but it will force pitchers to think differently about him. Last weekend, he launched home runs above the Rogers Centre batter's eye and into the WestJet Flight Deck on back-to-back days. Both of them were on middle-away fastballs. He hooked a down-and-away fastball for a 2-RBI double off Payton Tolle on Tuesday as well. Pitchers exploited a weakness of his in early April, and he adjusted. Now they'll have to adjust back. 

Spencer Miles

Spencer Miles was a name shrouded in mystery when the Blue Jays selected him in the Rule 5 draft. He had never pitched above A-ball before, a level he reached in 2022. Talks of a high-90s sinker and MLB-quality stuff were encouraging, but he had a lot to prove coming into the year. 

So far so good! Miles has a 2.87 ERA, 3.82 FIP, and a 3.44 xFIP through his first nine outings. He has pitched 15.2 innings in those outings, and I'd love to see the Jays take advantage of his multi-inning capabilities more often so as to preserve the high-leverage arms on the staff. With how good pitchers are these days, a 96-mph sinker with 16 inches of arm-side tail isn't as special as it used to be. Both stuff models on FanGraphs (Stuff+, PitchingBot) see Miles's sinker, and his arsenal in general, as run-of-the-mill. The models do think higher of his command. From a results standpoint, he has a 55th-percentile K rate, a 64th-percentile BB rate, and a 90th-percentile hard-hit rate. Nothing special, but it gets the job done.

In addition to his location, I believe his arsenal is quite advanced for a reliever and is also helping his stuff play up. He uses all four of his pitch types enough that hitters on both sides can't discount them, and he mixes both velocity and movement well in doing so. Check out his repertoire through this screenshot from the Paired Pitches tool on FanGraphs Lab: His sinker gets enough separation from his four-seamer that, hypothetically, if a lefty hitter thinks he's getting a middle-middle four-seamer but it's actually a sinker, it would wind up perfectly on the lower outside corner of the zone. 

All stats from FanGraphs and Baseball Savant, through games on April 29, 2026.