Owen Hill

I break down and react to the Blue Jays' heartbreaking 11-9 loss to the Rays. The offense continued its roll, scoring nine runs, but closer Jeff Hoffman shows once again he is on the brink. View full video

The Jays capped off a three-game sweep of the Mariners in Seattle on Sunday with a nine-run explosion. The victory marked the first time Toronto has scored nine runs in a game this year and only the second time they’ve scored at least eight since the second day of the season (the other being their 8-5 win against the Angels on Thursday). As enjoyable as Sunday’s game was to watch, the impressive part of this weekend’s series was less the thumping on Sunday and more the consistent, relentless attack of Blue Jays hitters across multiple games, against many different pitchers. Coming into the series, the Mariners’ pitching staff was a perceived strong point and ranked 12th in baseball in ERA. However, it allowed a previously scuffling Blue Jays offence to put up crooked numbers in all three games, plating a total of 21 runs over the weekend. To get there, the Jays received production up and down the lineup, hitting .315 as a team with 11 extra base hits, four of them homers. As we typically see when an offence is rolling, the top of the lineup was very productive. Bo Bichette was 4-for-11 with three walks while mashing his second homer of the year to right-centre field on Saturday. George Springer continued his defiance of Father Time with three RBIs and four runs scored, including a mammoth homer on Sunday. Ernie Clement and Nathan Lukes also stood out as key contributors at the very productive bottom of the lineup, both reaching base six times in the series and both picking up multiple RBIs. Just about every Blue Jay with a bat chipped in one way or another, which speaks to just how dominant the lineup was this weekend. Yet, easily the most exciting development of the series was the breakout of Addison Barger. I wrote just last week that I thought Barger was showing signs of an offensive breakout, but I can’t take credit for believing that this was on the horizon. Barger put 11 balls in play against the Mariners, eight of which were hard-hit balls, qualified by having exit velocities of 95 mph or higher. Of Barger’s eight hard-hit balls, five of them came off the bat over 110 mph, including a 116.5-mph line drive double – the hardest-hit ball of his MLB career. Oh, and most importantly, all of those eviscerated baseballs turned into six hits, including three doubles and his first homer of 2025. As you can see below, Barger now finds himself nestled between Oneil Cruz and Aaron Judge on the average exit velocity leaderboard across baseball (as of Monday), albeit in a much smaller sample than those around him: It doesn’t take much analysis to tell you that that is one hell of a development. If Barger has truly unlocked something and can continue to produce elite exit velocities while keeping his strikeout rate low, he raises the offensive ceiling of this team in a big way. There’s not a whole lot a defence can do against baseballs that leave vapour trails. Barger’s production has clearly not gone unnoticed by manager John Schneider and the Jays, as he found himself hitting in the three spot between Vlad and Springer on Saturday and Sunday in the absence of Anthony Santander, who missed most of the weekend with lingering shoulder soreness from a crash into the stands on Friday night. I’m morally obligated to put the small sample size caveat on Barger here, but there is a whole lot to dream on going forward now that we’ve seen a little proof of concept that he is capable of producing at the top of the lineup at the big league level. Looking more broadly at the lineup and the season as a whole, it’s important to note that this weekend represented a run scoring outburst, not necessarily a power outburst. Even with a gaudy average of seven runs per game, the Jays had an ISO of just .171, which would currently be sixth in baseball if it held up over the full season. That’s a very encouraging number, but it tells us that the Jays still did the majority of their damage by stringing hits together, which may raise a few eyebrows when it comes to the sustainability of their newfound run-scoring prowess. Long story short, we’re going to need a larger sample to see if the process has truly changed in a way that would mark this weekend as a turning point for the Blue Jays’ offence. With this weekend in the rearview mirror, the Blue Jays now rank 14th in baseball with a 99 team wRC+ and 27th in both ISO (.119) and home runs (30). There is a lot of work to be done to prove that the most recent three games are more representative of what this lineup will be than the 37 games previous, but if they are, it’ll be easy to look back at the end of this season and note this weekend as a major turning point for the offence. Stats and rankings in article taken prior to games on Monday, May 12. View full article

Digging into Jeff Hoffman's recent struggles and dispelling the notion that he may be tipping his pitches. View full video

Aside from a (glorious) three-game blip at the end of last week, the Blue Jays' offense has been starving for power since the outset of the season. Even with the offseason acquisition of Anthony Santander, the consensus around the roster coming into the year was that the offense was going to be a weak spot, specifically when it came to hitting home runs. Now, even those who were lowest on the lineup didn’t expect the Jays to be dead last in baseball with just 25 homers more than a month into the season. In all fairness, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find experts who don't believe the Jays will pick up the pace and find themselves more in line with the major league average by the end of the season. Still, it’s clear that the formula of relying on Santander and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to hit all of the team’s homers while everyone else tries to string hits together is not working. There’s been no shortage of opportunities for other players to prove to John Schneider that they can be the missing piece that brings the threat of extra-base hits with them to the plate, but to this point, nobody has taken the opportunity and run with it. Ernie Clement's .480 OPS across 92 plate appearances would likely make him unplayable if it weren't for his typically slick fielding at multiple infield positions. Meanwhile, after strong springs to get them on the Opening Day roster, Davis Schneider, and more recently, Will Wagner and Alan Roden, played their way down to Triple-A Buffalo, making way for Addison Barger to get some recent run as pretty close to an everyday player. In 39 plate appearances, Barger has yet to separate himself from his flailing peers in any meaningful way as far as results go, picking up just five hits. But if we dig a little deeper, there are some encouraging signs to indicate that some offensive production could be just around the corner. It’s been known for a few seasons now just how tooled up Barger is. He has the second-highest maximum exit velocity of any Blue Jay this year at 112.5 mph, and he swings the bat as fast as anyone. He is also an above-average runner and has one of the more impressive arms in baseball from both the outfield and the infield. Recognizing all of his loud tools, towards the end of 2024, the Blue Jays gave Barger a fairly extended opportunity to cement himself as a key piece of this team moving forward. Barger squandered it, as he finished the season hitting below .200 with a 26.7% strikeout rate. His poor big league performance in 2024 was a big factor in his starting in Triple A this season, but in a small sample since his call-up, 2025 Barger looks to have made some important changes to his offensive approach. In 2024, Barger was far too jumpy at the plate. Eager to show off his bat, he chased a very poor 31.5% of the time, leading to an inflated strikeout rate and deflated walk rate. Worse, the frequency with which he swung outside of the zone had a serious impact on his quality of contact. Despite his ability to hit baseballs in excess of 110 mph, Barger had an average exit velocity well below major league average at just 88.3 mph, very likely related to the number of pitches he was making contact with that were not in the strike zone. Coming into 2025, addressing his chase rate was one of the most important things Barger needed to do to overcome the “showcase player” tag given to those with loud tools that can’t seem to find their way into games. And so far, in a very small sample, he’s done exactly that. Between last year and this year, Barger has gone from well below to well above league average in chase percentage, currently sitting at just 20.8%. Addressing this seems to have led to better peripherals in a number of other areas, including his strikeout percentage, which is now below 18%, and his average exit velocity, which has jumped nearly five points to 93 mph (that’s just 0.1 mph less than Vladdy!). Because of how hard Barger is able to hit the baseball, he’s a threat to do damage whenever he’s at the plate, but despite taking steps in the right direction, he’s yet to do the most important thing: turn his tools into results. He has an OPS in the .400s and has yet to leave the yard. So far, he simply has not played well enough to help his team win games, and until he does, it doesn’t matter how promising his peripheral numbers might appear. As a part of the Blue Jays lineup, Barger possesses the key that could unlock some of the damage this team has been so desperately searching for. Yet, every day he plays without putting it all together, his leash in the big leagues gets a little bit shorter as the Blue Jays continue to hunt for power. Stats in article updated prior to games on May 7. View full article

Ross Atkins must have stayed in on Friday night, because he’s had a productive Saturday morning, reportedly agreeing to contracts with pitchers Spencer Turnbull and José Ureña. After mentioning to the media before Friday’s series opener against the Cleveland Guardians that the Jays were looking at free agent pitching that could impact the big league roster, Atkins made good on his promise by adding a pair of free agent swingmen in quick succession. Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet first reported that Spencer Turnbull has agreed to a major league deal with the Jays. Turnbull is a 32-year-old right-hander with major league experience both starting games and coming out of the bullpen. He spent 2024 with the Philadelphia Phillies and put together what is probably the best statistical season of his career to date, working a 2.65 ERA across seven starts and 10 relief appearances, before ending his season two months early with a lat strain. Turnbull will go at hitters with a steady diet of 92 mph four-seam fastballs, but his sweeper was the featured pitch in 2024, as opponents hit just .145 with a 30.8 whiff percentage against it. Turnbull also throws a sinker, curveball, change-up, and slider, all of which he can land for strikes. The Jays’ lack of starting pitching depth has been clear early in the season, and signing Turnbull is a solution to that problem. However, without a team until this point, Turnbull completely missed out on spring training and the first month of the season, so he will need to take some time to build up for major league games. It’s not yet clear if there’s a timeline for his first appearance as a Blue Jay, but I would expect the Jays to be relatively patient with Turnbull as he prepares to join the starting rotation or pitch bulk innings out of the bullpen. Before Turnbull is ready to go, we can expect José Ureńa, who also reportedly agreed to a major league contract with the Blue Jays on Saturday morning, to get some burn in a bulk role. Now 33 years old, Ureña has been around since 2015, working in a swingman role for most of that time. He began 2025 in Triple-A for the New York Mets, and was called up at the end of April, although just for just a single appearance, in which he gave up five runs across three innings, before getting DFA’d earlier this week. I wouldn’t put much stock into that outing, although Ureña’s arsenal doesn’t offer as much upside as Turnbull’s. He did see success for the Texas Rangers in 2024, keeping hitters off balance by mixing a slider and change-up with his mid-90’s sinker. He doesn’t rack up a whole lot of swings and misses, striking out just 15.1% of the hitters he faced in 2024, but when he’s successful he’s able to use the sinker to induce a ton of ground balls. Similar to Turnbull, Ureña offers some versatility with the ability to both start or throw multiple innings out of the bullpen. For the Rangers in 2024, he threw 64 2/3 innings in 32 appearances out of the bullpen to the tune of a 2.92 ERA, although he did get hit around in his nine starts, allowing opponents to hit .272 on route to a 5.08 ERA. With both reported deals being of the major league variety, subsequent roster moves will need to be made upon making these deals official. We can point the finger at guys like Eric Lauer, Josh Walker, and Dillon Tate on the 26-man roster as potential names that could lose their spot in favour of Turnbull or Ureña. However, both of them will need 40-man spots, meaning it won’t be enough to simply option two of the guys mentioned above. A final name that appears to remain in the mix to help the Blue Jays’ pitching depth is Casey Lawrence, whom the Jays claimed from the Seattle Mariners last week, although Lawrence was DFA’d and elected free agency before making an appearance for the Jays. The Jays would be hard-pressed to find him a 40-man spot, especially with Ureña and Turnbull now in the mix for a 26-man spot, but Lawrence would be another option with the ability to throw bulk innings. Regardless of the necessary roster casualties to get Turnbull and Ureña on the roster, these moves are an encouraging sign that Ross Atkins and the Blue Jays’ front office recognized a hole in the roster, and are showing a sense of urgency to fill it. View full article

We break down the Vladimir Guerrero Jr plate appearance that resulted in him taking Boston starting pitcher Garrett Crochet deep. View full video

Arjun NimmalaTrey YesavageRicky TiedemannJake BlossOrelvis MartinezKhal StephenCharles McAdooJosh KasevichAdam MackoKendry RojasEnmanuel BonillaFernando PerezAlan RodenLanden MaroudisJohnny KingJonatan ClaseEddinson PaulinoJuaron Watts-BrownYohendrick PinangoBrandon Barriera

The Blue Jays have been desperate for power. Can Daulton Varsho's return be a turning point for the offense? Daulton Varsho made his much-anticipated season debut on Tuesday, coming off of the injured list with a fully rehabbed right shoulder. The return of their everyday centre fielder represents a refreshing jolt to a Blue Jays lineup that has struggled mightily to produce runs since the very start of the season. The offensive woes have been well documented, so I’ll refer you to Leo Morgenstern’s piece from this weekend for a deep dive into what exactly has gone wrong, but just for a quick recap: The Jays would likely benefit from sacrificing some contact for some power. Having Varsho’s bat in the lineup every day will be a shift towards this goal in and of itself, simply because his offensive profile comes with high bat speed (78th percentile in 2024) and a lot of swing and miss (whiffed 27% of the time in 2024). Most importantly, Varsho is a threat to leave the yard, making him a much-needed reinforcement for a lineup that ranks 29th in homers, with just 16 through their first 29 games. It’s asking a lot of Varsho, who has yet to put up a season with a league average OPS as a Blue Jay, to come off the IL, slot into the middle of the order and completely change the fortunes of one of the worst offenses in baseball. Further, if we take a (very quick) glance at his numbers across seven rehab games in the minor leagues, we can see that Varsho was just 3-for-25 without an extra base hit between Dunedin and Buffalo. It would be malpractice to look at minor league rehab numbers from seven games and make any sort of proclamation, but it is important to note that Varsho wasn't exactly setting the world on fire at the plate, and even if he were, he’s not going to single-handedly fix the offense. Interestingly enough, between the hot starts of George Springer and Myles Straw, Blue Jays centre fielders actually ranked fourth in baseball in wRC+ before Varsho’s season debut on Tuesday. It’s one of the few positions from which the Blue Jays have received above-average offensive production. With Varsho likely to own centre field for the rest of the season, it sparks up an interesting discussion about who gets displaced and what the best way is to deploy this roster. The corresponding move to Varsho’s addition to the 26-man roster was slightly surprising, as the Jays opted to send infielder Will Wagner to Triple A and carry six outfielders, rather than sending one of Nathan Lukes, Alan Roden or Addison Barger to Buffalo. This tells us that Barger is likely going to get some run at third base, a position he’s spent a lot of time at in the minor leagues. Barger could play the strong side of a third base platoon with Ernie Clement, another Blue Jay who’s limped out of the blocks this season. With Barger potentially getting the bulk of his playing time at third, and Varsho’s name set in stone as the centre fielder, we’re left with Lukes, Straw, Springer, and Anthony Santander to split time between the corners. Springer and Santander both need to be in the lineup every day, so we’ll see the two of them split time between right field and DH. However, on Sunday, John Schnieder did mention wanting to get Santander more time in the outfield, indicating we could sometimes see a lineup with Springer in left and Santander in right. This will be a little bit easier to digest now that Varsho's elite glove is back in centre field, but it makes things complicated for Straw and Lukes, who will lose playing time on days that both Springer and Santander start in the outfield. Although it might not be as sexy as talking about the home runs he’s going to hit, it’s important to mention what Varsho’s return is going to do for the Blue Jays’ defence. Prior to his return, they were completely neutral as a team according to outs above average (OAA), while they ranked eighth in baseball with 10 defensive runs saved (DRS) after leading the league in DRS each of the last two seasons. The bulk of Varsho’s value comes on the defensive side of the ball, and his return will reinforce one of the roster’s strongest attributes, which should make it easier for the pitching staff to keep the offense within striking distance in any given game. It didn't take long for him to flash the leather in his first game back: All things considered, the return of Daulton Varsho couldn’t be more timely, as the Blue Jays shore up their centre field defense and continue their search for home runs. View full article

The Braves must have been in a hurry to get out of town. Jays pitchers struck them out 19 times on Wednesday afternoon! Not that anybody should be looking too closely at the standings on April 16, but the Toronto Blue Jays’ 3-1 win over the Braves made the Jays the first team in the American League to win 11 games. Also significant in Wednesday afternoon’s victory, Blue Jays pitchers struck out 19 hitters, a franchise record for a nine-inning game. Chris Bassitt did much of the heavy lifting early on, punching out 10 Braves across his five innings of work. It was his game with first double-digit strikeouts since September 2023. Bassitt was great yet again in his fourth start of the season, holding Atlanta scoreless on two walks and three hits, lowering his early-season ERA to 0.77. When you looked at the pitching matchup and saw Spencer Strider going up against Chris Bassitt, I’m sure you might have been surprised to find out that Bassitt would not only outduel Strider but strike out twice as many batters. After all, Strider has a career average of 13.5 strikeouts per nine innings. Speaking of strikeouts, Strider picked up his 500th career K in just his 335th inning of work during the fifth inning. This start was his first since he underwent Tommy John surgery last spring. Based on some of the swings the Blue Jays were taking early on, he looks likely to return to notching double-digit strikeout games of his own very soon. Following a 30-pitch fifth inning from Bassitt, the broadcast picked up on some debate in the dugout between John Schneider, Pete Walker, Bassitt. After originally seeming to decide to send Bassitt out for the sixth, the manager decided to turn to his bullpen. Lefty Brendon Little came in to face the heart of the Braves lineup and brought some of the nastiest stuff we’ve seen from him all season. Despite throwing the ball in the strike zone on just three (yes, three) of his 20 pitches, Little struck out the side while mixing in a walk to Sean Murphy. His pitch chart does not look like that of a pitcher who had much success, but he forced hitters not only to chase, but to whiff on every one of their swings. Nick Sandlin came out of the ‘pen in the seventh. He induced a groundout, allowed a single, then started contributing to the strikeout total by punching out Orlando Arcia on a nasty slider. It was a two-run game at the time, and leadoff hitter Michael Harris II stpped up to the plate as the tying run. John Schneider bounced out of the dugout and called on his flamethrowing set-up man, Yimi García, hoping to get four outs. And that’s exactly what he got. In typical dominant fashion, García fanned all four hitters he faced, keeping them off balance with curveballs and blowing upper-90s heaters by them. When García’s work was done, the Blue Jays sat at 18 punchies, tied with the previous nine franchise record set against the Royals in August 1998. Jeff Hoffman came in for the save in the Bottom of the ninth. Given Hoffman’s high-octane stuff, the Jays were also within reach of the all-time nine-inning strikeout record of 20, which is shared by a number of teams, including three pitchers who did it individually. Hoffman induced a lineout before Drake Baldwin killed the shutout with a two-strike homer. The ball was pulled down the left field line at just 95 MPH and had an xBA of just .150. A Jarred Kelenic popout put 20 out of reach, but Hoffman got Eli White swinging, securing both the win and the franchise record.. Perhaps the most impressive part of the pitching staff’s work was the job they did against the top of the Atlanta lineup. The first three hitters, Michael Harris II, Austin Riley, and Matt Olson, finished a combined 1-for-12 with 11 K’s, including golden sombreros for both Harris II and Riley. Riley has been on a heater at the plate, with a 153 wRC+, and started the series against the Jays with three homers and six RBI in the first two games. It was impressive to see the Jays cool off such a hot hitter en route to another series victory. Courtesy of Blue Jays social, here’s a look at all 19 strikeouts in all their glory! View full article

Yes, of course it's too early. But Gausman showed some extremely encouraging signs, and they're the kinds of signs that tend to stabilize very quickly. On Wednesday, Kevin Gausman made his spring training debut in Bradenton, Florida against the Pirates. He immediately gave us a reason to let out a long sigh, as his first two pitches were four-seam fastballs that were clocked at 94.2 mph and 95.1, respectively. Gausman threw 38 pitches across an inning and two-thirds, sitting just under 95 mph with his four-seamer and working it up to just over 96. Gausman walked a batter but did not give up a hit or a run in an auspicious start to his 2025 season. Ordinarily, we can throw out almost anything a pitcher does in his first spring training game of a particular year, and we should err on the side of caution in this case as well. However, the velocity of Gausman’s fastball has been a specific area of concern for the last calendar year. He came into camp with shoulder fatigue, and after a shortened spring training colored by health concerns, and his fastball velocity remained inconsistent. Some days he’d get out of the gates hot and sit above 94.5 mph with easy velocity reminiscent of 2023, when he finished third in the Cy Young voting. Some days he’d be fighting and grunting to get the radar gun to show 93. Take a look at how drastically Gausman’s velocity fluctuated start to start last season: Not only was the velocity on his fastball extremely inconsistent, it also ended up with a season average of just 94 mph. That was 0.7 mph below his 2023 average, and his lowest mark since 2020. Gausman will mix in the occasional slider or changeup to righties, but he's essentially a two-pitch pitcher. He throws a rising four-seamer at the top of the zone, and his featured pitch is a devastating splitter that he uses at and below the bottom of the zone to rack up swings and misses. The pitches play off of each other. The threat of a hard fastball in the zone makes hitters susceptible to splitters below it, and vice versa. For Gausman to return to the elite form we've come to expect, he needs to be able to get hitters to swing under fastballs and over splitters. This is why every tick that Gausman loses on his four-seamer means so much. When hitters have an extra tick to discern between the two pitches, Gausman’s whiff percentage drops and he can get into trouble. A veteran pitcher at this point in his career, the 34-year-old Gausman managed to survive the decrease and inconsistencies in his fastball velocity, without too many catastrophic outings, but his overall performance suffered. His xERA (which uses exit velocity and launch angle to predict the ERA that the pitcher deserved) jumped almost a full run, and he lost almost 10 percentage points on his strikeout percentage. Gausman’s struggles beating hitters with the fastball is by far the most obvious symptom of these problems. Given the concerns surrounding his fastball velocity, it’s extremely encouraging to see Gausman average 94.9 mph on his four-seamer so early in spring training, especially considering that the pitch sat at just 94 last season. That's how Gausman sees it too. "Last spring, I think it was a lot harder to get to 86, especially those first couple of weeks," he told reporters. It’s also encouraging that the fastball registered five whiffs on 14 swings. His fastball averaged 17 inches of rise, just like it did last year, an excellent sign considering how much faster it came in. Gausman has clearly entered camp healthy, which is the most important thing for any player. We didn’t see Gausman show off the new cutter he hinted at late in the offseason, and during Thursday's game, the broadcast team mentioned that he has said he's still learning how to locate the pitch. That’s something to keep an eye on when he takes the mound again on Monday. If Gausman does indeed show it off, he’ll try to use it as another weapon to try and get in on the hands of lefties, and off the end of the bat against righties. Given the concerns with the four-seamer’s ability to miss bats as he gets older, I love to see Gausman trying to find a way to induce a little bit of weak contact. Well, we just overanalyzed the crap out of 38 meaningless pitches. It's way too early to worry about results, but Gausman’s first start of the spring still gave us a lot to be happy about. However, I am going to offer a grain of salt to every reader buying Gausman stock, because half of this article was spent highlighting his inability to keep it consistent in 2024! One good start it great, but two in a row would be a lot more meaningful. As he builds up his pitch count, be prepared to see some fluctuations in Gausman’s fastball velocity. But as we get closer to opening day, his ability to keep his four-seamer at or around 95 mph will be the biggest indicator of what 2025 will look like. View full article

How real do we think the 97-98 in yesterday's ST game was? Pretty skeptical he's actually touching that in his first spring appearance but if he has that in the tank Bloss is a whole lot more exciting.

I think it's also important to note that Shapiro's contract is done after the 2025 season so if he's sticking around he'll need a new deal. Atkins' finishes after 2026 but if Shapiro isn't coming back then I doubt the new President gives Atkins a shot. It is so unclear if these guys will be back because if the Jays suck again do you really want them picking the 2026 direction at the trade deadline just to be out the door two months later? Do you trust an entirely new front office dealing with the Vlad FA negotiations? If the team is really good they'll both get new deals, but at the same time, 0 division titles and 0 playoff wins in their tenure considering the resources they've had to work with is completely unacceptable.

Orelvis Martinez has proven that he has what it takes to be an impactful power hitter at all levels of the minor leagues. Can 2025 be the year he starts impacting winning at the big league level? We’re not all that far removed from the Toronto Blue Jays’ young core being the envy of the league, with what appeared to be a stacked farm system with waves of talent set to make winning sustainable in Toronto for a long time. The Jays broke the 90-win plateau in 2021 and 2022 and won 89 games en route to a playoff berth in 2023. But in 2024, disaster struck, as the Jays found themselves well out of the playoff race and stumbling to just 74 wins. We can point to several decisions regarding baseball operations and on-field moments to explain why the Jays have ended up in this less-than-ideal position. Still, the most glaring is that the concept of waves of talent never comes to fruition. Instead of the elite young core being supplemented by a combination of free agent signings and prospect graduations, the Jays have (with a few exceptions) only been able to add to their big league roster through free agency or trades. This led to the Jays being forced to bring in and rely on guys like Justin Turner, Kevin Kiermaier, Daniel Vogelbach, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa, all of whom were asked to play bigger roles than they should have been playing on a winning team. We all know how that turned out, so in 2025, the Jays will need some homegrown talent to punch above their weight class. One player who could finally put to rest the ‘Blue Jays can’t develop players’ allegations is Orelvis Martinez. What Went Wrong in 2024? Well, this is a pretty easy one… Orelvis Martínez was rocking an .869 OPS with 17 homers at Triple-A Buffalo when he earned the call to the big leagues as the corresponding move to a Bo Bichette IL stint in late June. He had just enough time to make his first-ever big league appearance, going 1-3 with a single, before he was popped for PEDs and handed an 80-game suspension, ending his season. Between the injury to Bichette and the ensuing firesale of veterans, Martínez’s suspension meant he had squandered an opportunity to carve out everyday at-bats in the big leagues. I’m sure the Jays were just as disappointed that they didn’t get a chance to see what Martínez could do against big-league pitching in a low-stress environment. What could have been a breakout second half for Martínez, or at least one filled with valuable lessons about the difference between the major and minor leagues, instead turned into a valuable lesson about reading the ingredients on his prescriptions. What Can Go Right in 2025? Martínez has been a fun prospect to follow for half a decade at this point, as he’s routinely found himself near the top of the home run leaderboards and has been able to do so without seeing his strikeout and walk rates completely crater as he’s progressed from level to level. If only slightly, across 319 Triple-A plate appearances in 2024, Martínez improved on the numbers from his first 244 in 2023. It’s noteworthy that Martínez dropped his Triple-A strikeout rate from 27% in 2023 to below 24% in 2024 while getting on base and hitting for power at better rates. This is a step in development that every team prays to see their power-hitting prospects get to. While Martínez did so marginally and in a small sample size, he did so at the highest level of the minors and four years younger than the average age. The Blue Jays were impressed enough to want to see what he could do in the big leagues in what was a slightly aggressive promotion at the time. The difference between the highest level of the minor leagues and the big leagues is said to be the largest jump in quality of competition in a professional baseball player’s career, so no one is expecting Orelvis to come up to the big leagues at 23 years old and plug his .869 OPS and 30 homers into the lineup, but his ability to hit for power is tantalizing. If Martínez can continue to display an improved ability to put the ball in play and make better swing decisions in spring training, his power will make him an attractive option to break camp with the Blue Jays. He'll be in the lineup daily if he continues to display these skills against big-league pitching. How Will This Impact the Blue Jays? Through what looks to be a strong offseason with the additions of Anthony Santander, Andrés Giménez, Max Scherzer, Jeff Hoffman, and Yimi García, the Jays have put themselves in a better position heading into 2025 than they did a year ago. However, as is the case with any 74-win team trying to retool through free agency, there are a few holes on the roster that will need to be filled by internal options. Number one on the list is third base. ZiPS projects that Ernie Clement will get the bulk of the work at third base, but his versatility across three infield positions suits him very well for a utility role. Clement will play an important role for the 2025 Blue Jays, but he certainly doesn’t have a strong enough claim of third base that we can pencil him into the opening-day lineup. The Jays would be thrilled if Orelvis Martínez could hit enough to force Clement into a bench role like the one he thrived in last season. Clement hit .385 in 13 pinch-hitting at-bats in 2024, and his ability to put the bat on the ball plays extremely well off the bench late in games. Marínez could also factor in at second base, although you may have to squint a bit to see it as the newly acquired platinum glover Andrés Giménez has a claim to the position. Giménez and Martínez hit from opposite sides of the plate, so we could see Martínez get a chance to platoon a bit and get starts at second base against left-handed pitchers. Most importantly, Orelvis Martínez’s profile offers a fix to the most glaring hole on the Blue Jays’ roster: power. Given the opportunity, it wouldn’t be silly to suggest that Martínez can hit more home runs over a season than Clement and Giménez combined. With just two players on the roster who broke the 20-home-run mark in 2024, the Blue Jays would be foolish not to give him an opportunity he can’t. Marínez will play the entire 2025 season at just 23 years of age, so this is far from a make-or-break season for him regarding his ability to be a productive big leaguer. Still, with the Blue Jays’ questions about the positions he plays, he will have an opportunity to break and impact winning for a team desperate for contributions from homegrown players. View full article

Max Scherzer’s reputation precedes him, but how will his once-legendary stuff play in his age-40 season? The 2024 season offers some hints. Across 17 seasons, Max Scherzer has put together a slam-dunk Hall of Fame career: 3,407 strikeouts across 2,878 innings en route to 73.2 fWAR is enough to make even the most in-tune fans take a step back and simply appreciate what he’s done. But at 40 years old, Scherzer isn't ready to hang up the spikes quite yet. His one-year, $15.5-million deal with the Blue Jays confirms that Scherzer will take at least one more kick at the can before enjoying a well-deserved retirement. Scherzer is no longer the pitcher he once was, but we can take a look at his 2024 to make an educated guess about what he has left in the tank for the Blue Jays in year 18. First things first, a litany of injuries limited Scherzer to nine starts in 2024: recovering from offseason back surgery, struggling with shoulder fatigue and nerve issues, and finally a September hamstring strain that ended his season. The injuries are a concern, especially the arm fatigue, which makes this a riskier signing than we’re used to seeing from the Toronto front office. The positive sign is that when Scherzer was actually able to get on the mound in 2024, he produced solid results. But before we plan the parade and slot Scherzer into the number one spot in the rotation, we have to look into a couple of concerning trends. That four-seamer is the biggest concern. Scherzer throws it roughly 45% of the time, making it by far his most important pitch. According to Fangraphs, its Stuff+ cratered from a solid 104 in 2023 to a horrifying 78 in 2024. That doesn’t paint a pretty picture and it's mostly about the velocity, but the fact that the Blue Jays just invested over $15 million in Scherzer tells me that expect his right arm to bounce back. Coming off of an injury-plagued season, an extended offseason may have been just what the doctor ordered for Scherzer to get his body, and therefore his four-seamer, back where it needs to be. If Scherzer is healthy, that fastball should tick back up, and its velocity will be one of the indicators I’m watching closest toward the end of spring training. I also have my eye on the cutter. In the graphic below (courtesy of Baseball Savant), look where the red arrow is pointing. Scherzer’s cutter and slider merged into basically the same pitch in 2024, not just in their movement profiles but in their velocity. The two pitches were separated by just 1.6 mph. Hitters didn’t have to worry about differentiating between the two pitches. If we’re wrong about Scherzer being able to get back to his above-average fastball, Pete Walker’s most important project may be helping Scherzer find a way to turn his slider and his cutter back into two distinct pitches. Older pitchers lose their ability to miss bats and limit hard contact, but in a limited sample, Scherzer was successful in both categories in 2024. His 35% hard-hit rate 29% whiff rate were both excellent, and his 36% chase rate was elite. That chase rate is a crazy number, the highest of his entire career. Even in a short sample of 43 1/3 innings, that’s a hard number to ignore. Even the chase rate on Scherzer’s fastball, which saw a huge drop of 1.3 mph from 2023 to 2024, rose from 24% to 30%. I’m open theories about exactly what happened here, but not sure if I have a guess myself. One thing’s for sure: if Scherzer can replicate this amount of chase from opposing hitters, it will be a major indicator that he’s still got it. Launch angle is also key. Relying on his four-seam fastball in and above the zone has helped Scherzer rack up whiffs and strikeouts, but when hitters make do contact with that pitch, the ball is more than likely going to be hit in the air. For that reason, Scherzer has always been susceptible to the long ball. Even when he won the National League Cy Young in 2016, he led the NL with 31 home runs allowed. As his stuff trends down and he misses fewer bats, that’s not ideal. However, there a few other factors to consider. Back in July, Lance Brozdowski noted that against left-handed batters, Scherzer was bringing his four-seamer inside more often, effectively trading some swing-and-miss for contact suppression. It’s encouraging that even with reduced stuff, Scherzer has so far found a way to limit hard-hit balls. It also helps that he’ll be pitching in front of an outfield with elite defenders, and that Rogers Centre is far from the launching pad it used to be. That’s a lot of concerns. We’ll be watching to see whether Scherzer can regain some velocity, figure out his cutter, and somehow keep racking up chases and avoiding hard contact. It remains to be seen how much he can help the Blue Jays return to contention, but I couldn’t forgive myself if I wrote this whole article without mentioning how damn cool it is that Max Scherzer is going to pitch for the Toronto Blue Jays. View full article