Leo Morgenstern

José Berríos is off to a solid start in 2025. With a strong effort against the Red Sox last week, he brought his season ERA down under 4.00. If you ignore his rough Opening Day appearance, the numbers from his last six starts are particularly impressive. Since his April 1 outing against the Nationals, he has a 3.03 ERA and a 3.59 FIP in 35 2/3 innings pitched. Perhaps his most impressive number in that time is a 48% groundball rate. He has also been durable, averaging just a smidge under six innings per start. This is the kind of performance the Blue Jays have come to expect from Berríos. Throughout his career – aside from an uncharacteristically poor showing in 2022 – he has been a safe bet to give his team about six innings every five days with an ERA in the mid-3.00s. This year looks like it’s going to be more of the same. Yet, while the big picture might look a lot like it has in years past, a closer look reveals that Berríos is doing things differently in 2025. Or, at least, he’s doing one thing differently: He’s throwing his signature slurve less often, specifically to right-handed hitters. The chart below shows Berríos’s slurve usage in each season of his career, according to Baseball Savant: Season Slurve% 2025 25.1% 2024 28.6% 2023 29.6% 2022 30.9% 2021 30.5% 2020 29.8% 2019 28.3% 2018 30.4% 2017 30.0% 2016 21.1% So far in 2025, he’s throwing fewer slurves than in any season since his partial rookie campaign in 2016. But those overall rates are actually underselling what’s going on. This next chart shows his slurve usage by season against right-handed batters: Season Slurve% to RHB 2025 24.7% 2024 37.0% 2023 31.7% 2022 32.2% 2021 33.4% 2020 34.0% 2019 34.2% 2018 38.7% 2017 38.9% 2016 30.1% For the first time, Berríos is throwing his slurve less than 25% of the time to same-handed hitters. In fact, this is the first time he has thrown his slurve less than 30% of the time to same-handed hitters. That's a significant drop, especially considering that his 37% slurve rate to righty batters in 2024 was his highest rate in six years. If you'd prefer a more detailed representation of how unusual this is for Berríos, take a look at his slurve usage against righties in each month of his career: Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Berríos used his slurve for 34.1% of his pitches against righties during his disappointing Opening Day start. That’s right in line with his career average rate. Since then, however, he has only used the breaking pitch 22.6% of the time against right-handed batters. He hasn’t thrown it to them more than 26% of the time in any of his last six games. As is the case for any pitcher with a diverse arsenal, Berríos’s exact pitch mix fluctuates from game to game and opponent to opponent. Yet, never before has he used his slurve so sparingly against righty batters in six consecutive starts. What makes this so surprising is that the slurve has long been a useful weapon for Berríos against right-handed batters. These are good stats! Jose Berríos's Slurve vs. RHB by Year Year wOBA xwOBA Whiff% 2024 .288 .303 30.2% 2023 .208 .275 30.6% 2022 .245 .264 32.4% 2021 .201 .250 34.7% 2020 .183 .232 35.3% 2019 .324 .306 32.0% 2018 .274 .236 38.4% 2017 .243 .262 34.1% 2016 .402 .313 25.0% 2016-24 .258 .270 33.1% As recently as the second half of 2024, right-handed hitters produced a .264 wOBA and a matching .264 xwOBA, as well as a 36.9% whiff rate, against Berríos’s slurve. And as recently as his Opening Day start this season, he was confident enough in his slurve to throw it to righties as often as any other pitch in his arsenal. There’s no doubt Berríos struggled on Opening Day. There's no doubt his slurve was part of the problem. Still, it’s hard to understand how one bad start could have scared him this badly. He has trusted his slurve as an essential tool in his belt for years. That kind of trust shouldn’t just disappear over night. In place of those missing slurves, Berríos has been leaning harder on his sinker. He has thrown it almost half of the time (49.5%) to right-handed batters since his second start of 2025. He is also using more changeups against righties than ever before (13.2%). That part, at least, makes a bit more sense. His offspeed stuff has always worked well for him. Over the past ten years, his changeup has induced a .260 wOBA, a .262 xwOBA, and a 34.5% whiff rate from righty batters. It’s less clear why Berríos would want to throw so many sinkers. His sinker is a perfectly fine primary fastball, but it’s never been much of an out pitch. Maybe he likes how his sinker and changeup tunnel together, given their similar movement profiles? Regardless, none of this is nearly enough to explain why he has decreased his slurve usage so dramatically. Discussing his slurve with The Athletic in 2022, Berríos said he had used “the same grip, same pitch” since he was a teenager. He even mentioned how well it paired with his fastball. He said that when his slurve was at its best, he could throw it “no matter how many times.” “That pitch is a special thing for me,” he said. And it was. As long as Berríos is pitching well, there's no reason to complain about his arsenal. Even so, I wish we had an explanation. Why is José Berríos trying to fix something that didn't seem to be broken? Why is he cutting back on his signature slurve? View full article

Great point. If this trend continues well into May I’d definitely be interested to do a deeper dive on the reasons behind it

If you’ve been following our work here at Jays Centre this season, I don’t need to tell you that the Blue Jays have been going through a bit of a power outage. We’ve covered the topic extensively. So has every other blog, newspaper, fan forum, TV show, podcast, and town crier that covers the Blue Jays. A lack of power was the defining story of the first month of the season. Yet, with all the talk about home runs, I don’t think many fans have noticed that something else is missing, too. Something that couldn’t be more different from the long ball. The Blue Jays rank last in the majors in infield hits. Infield hits are exciting. An infield hit is a race between the runner and the defense (that the runner wins). It’s the kind of play that makes your heart race almost as fast as the batter is running down the line. He makes a “safe” signal with his arms as he runs through first. The umpire does the same. Perhaps you do too, as you leap up from your couch or your seat at the stadium. Just as exciting are the infield hits on which the defense doesn’t even bother to make a play. There wouldn’t be a point. The runner is already safe at first. Here’s a link to watch a few of my favourite Blue Jays infield hits this year. Unfortunately, there haven’t been many. Through 31 games (prior to first pitch on May 2), the Blue Jays have 13 infield hits (per FanGraphs). No other team has fewer than 18. The league median is 23.5. The league-leading Brewers have 44 infield hits – more than three times as many as the Jays. To put it another way, the Blue Jays have legged out infield hits on just 3.8% of their groundballs this season. The team with the next-lowest infield hit rate, the Red Sox, has converted 5.5% of their grounders into infield singles. The league average is 7.3%. With 13 infield singles in 31 games, Toronto is on pace for just 68 by the end of the year. Last year, they had 110. The year before, 117. Dating back to 2002 (that's as far back as the records go), the Blue Jays have never had fewer than 91 infield hits in a full season. No team has had fewer than 75. Of course, all 30 teams had fewer than 68 infield hits during the shortened 2020 season, but the White Sox led the league that year with 64. That’s only four fewer than Toronto’s 162-game pace right now! Much like my piece from yesterday about a mysterious lack of triples in Toronto, this is more a fun bit of trivia than anything else. After all, infield hits aren’t inherently good or bad. I ran the numbers using data from every team season since 2002, excluding 2020. I found no meaningful correlation between infield hits and scoring runs. I wasn't surprised. Sure, all else being equal, a team with more hits will score more runs. But all else isn't equal. Infield hits, as you might imagine, are slightly negatively correlated with home runs and isolated power. So, teams that rack up infield hits are less likely to rack up homers. I presume you can see why that might be a problem. This is another reason why Toronto’s lack of infield hits is so odd. With 21 home runs and 13 infield hits through 31 games in 2025, the Blue Jays are on pace for a combined total of 178 home runs and infield hits this season. That would be the lowest combined total of those two statistics on record. (The 2013 Marlins finished with 95 home runs and 103 infield hits, good for a total of 198.) As I said, a lack of infield hits on its own isn’t a problem. However, a lack of infield hits combined with a lack of power certainly is. When a team isn’t hitting for extra bases, the lineup needs to manufacture runs in other ways. The Blue Jays haven't been doing that. Not only do they rank last in MLB in infield hits, but they also rank among the bottom half of teams in bunt hits, stolen bases, and FanGraphs baserunning value. Meanwhile, they rank among the top half of teams in less desirable categories like caught stealing and GIDP. I don't want to make too big a deal out of this. Like I said, the primary reason I wrote this article is because I think Toronto's lack of infield hits is an interesting bit of trivia, nothing more. Still, as the Blue Jays continue to struggle in the power department, it wouldn't hurt if they started doing more of the little things right. And if nothing else, it would make their power-lacking brand of baseball more exciting to watch. View full article

If you’ve gone to see a Blue Jays game at the Rogers Centre this season, you might have seen a lot of cool things. You might have seen Daulton Varsho make a tough play look easy. You might have seen Varsho turn an easy play into the catch of the year. Perhaps you saw Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit the hardest batted ball that anyone has ever recorded at the Rogers Centre in the Statcast era. Or you could have watched five Blue Jays pitchers set a franchise record with 19 strikeouts in one game. If you were extra lucky, you might have even heard the oh-so-satisfying clunk of the ball against the railing as Myles Straw hit his first Blue Jays home run. One thing you won’t have seen or heard (or touched or smelled or tasted) is a triple. Through 16 games at home this season, the Blue Jays have yet to hit a three-bagger. Indeed, they’re in a three-way tie for last in MLB with one lonely triple all year. (George Springer tripled on April 4 at Citi Field.) None of the Blue Jays’ opponents have tripled in Toronto either. Just over 1,200 batters have stepped to the plate at the Rogers Centre in 2025. Fifty-two of those batters hit their way to second base. Forty-eight sent one into the seats and bought themselves a ticket around the bases. But no triples. Truth be told, no one has even come particularly close to tripling. There certainly haven't been any inside-the-park home runs in Toronto. No runners have been thrown out trying to stretch a double into a triple either. I used the Extra Bases Taken Run Value Leaderboard on Baseball Savant to identify the costliest hold decisions runners have made at second base at the Rogers Centre this year. In other words, I looked for situations in which runners might have made a mistake by holding at second base instead of trying to stretch a double into a triple. Yet, none of the hold decisions I found were particularly egregious. If you’re curious to check them out for yourself, here’s a link to a compilation of the four costliest second base holds at the Rogers Centre this season. All four are Blue Jays runners. Perhaps a true speedster could have converted some of those doubles into triples, but it’s hard to blame any of Bo Bichette, Anthony Santander, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., or Tyler Heineman for holding up at second. I also looked at the outfielder Arm Value Leaderboard on Baseball Savant, and I’d like to give a shout-out to a couple of Blue Jays outfielders for "preventing" a pair of triples. To be perfectly honest, there's a good chance neither of these plays would have been triples anyway, even with a much worse defender on the case. Statcast gives both of them a mere +0.01 defensive run value. Nonetheless, I was impressed. The first came on April 1 against the Nationals. Alan Roden showed off his strong arm in right field with a bullet to the cut-off man. Runner Alex Call looks over as he’s halfway to second base and realizes he has no chance to try for third. The second play was on April 14 against the Braves. Myles Straw ran down a ball in the right-center gap to hold the lightning-fast Eli White to a double. If Straw hadn't reached the ball so quickly, White very well could have bolted for third. This article isn't a close statistical analysis like some of my previous pieces for Jays Centre. I'm not trying to diagnose a legitimate problem with this one. To be honest, I just like triples. I think they’re one of the most entertaining plays in baseball, and I’m disappointed that fans in Toronto haven’t been able to see one in person this season. This past March/April was only the sixth month in the past 24 years (that's as far back as there FanGraphs splits tool goes) in which there wasn't a triple hit at the Rogers Centre. That's only six triple-free months out of 130 months of baseball. What's more, this past March/April featured 15 Blue Jays home games. That's more than in any of the other five triple-free months. And now the drought has lasted into May! This might not mean anything for the Blue Jays going forward, but that doesn't mean it's not worth talking about. It's weird! Indeed, the fact that no hitter has recorded a triple at the Rogers Centre yet this season is mostly an effect of small sample size weirdness. It’s only been 16 games. Eventually, someone is going to triple in Toronto. That said, it’s not entirely random. In the early 2000s, the Rogers Centre was a great place to hit triples. According to Baseball Savant's three-year rolling park factors, the Blue Jays’ stadium ranked among the top 12 most triple-friendly stadiums every year between 2003-12, ranking as high as sixth in the 2006-08 window. Then the triples disappeared. The Rogers Centre has been a below-average venue for triples in each three-year period since 2013. It probably didn't help when the 2022-23 offseason renovations brought in the outfield walls; the triple factor in Toronto reached its lowest point of the 21st century in 2023. However, the Rogers Centre’s triple factor rebounded in 2024 to its highest single-year peak since 2016, despite additional offseason renovations that significantly shrunk the field's foul territory. Ultimately, it takes several years' worth of data to properly understand how a ballpark’s dimensions affect the prevalence of different batted ball outcomes. That's especially true for triples. Three-baggers are uncommon enough that any stadium's park factor for triples will fluctuate quite a bit from year to year. So, we're still learning what kind of park the renovated Rogers Centre truly is. This ongoing triple drought is another piece of the puzzle. That's all well and good, but I'm hoping the next puzzle piece the Blue Jays take out of the box is a bit more exciting. If small sample size weirdness can lead to a month without a triple, perhaps it can also lead to a month that's stuffed to the gills with triples. A fan can dream! View full article

Bowden Francis has given the Blue Jays a chance to win in each of his first five starts. Yet, his underlying numbers tell a different story. Should fans be concerned? Are you worried about Bowden Francis? For your sake, I hope not. Francis has a 3.58 ERA through five starts. He has yet to give up more than three earned runs in an outing. He is averaging five and a half innings per game. If you’re worried about a pitcher with numbers like that, you might just be looking for problems. You don’t have to do that! The Blue Jays have given us more than enough to stress about as it is. If Francis is keeping you up at night, it probably says more about you than it does about him. Anyway, I’m worried about Bowden Francis. Underlying the righty’s mid-3.00s ERA is a 6.27 expected ERA, third-worst among starting pitchers (min. 25 IP). He has held opponents to a .235 batting average. Statcast thinks that number should be .304. The explanation? Francis has given up gobs of hard contact over his first five starts. Last season, his hard-hit rate was a perfectly respectable 36.2%. This year, that rate is up to 46.3%. That's the difference between the 72nd percentile and the 24th. This isn’t just an issue of one or two bad games skewing the stats. Francis has allowed at least four hard-hit balls in all five of his starts this year. Of the 100 hardest-hit batted balls he has allowed in his career, one quarter have come in 2025. That’s heavily disproportionate to the number of his career pitches (17.1%) that have come this season. Opposing batters are hitting Francis with authority. Eventually, more of those hard-hit balls are going to start falling for hits. All the more concerning, Francis is also trending in the wrong direction with his strikeout and walk rates. In 2024, he struck out 22.5% of opposing batters while walking just 5.4%. His strikeout rate was roughly in line with the league average, while his walk rate was perhaps his most impressive metric. Fewer than 20 pitchers threw at least 100 innings last year while issuing free passes at a lower clip. Francis improved both his strikeout and walk rates when he secured his rotation spot around the trade deadline. From July 29 through the end of the season, he struck out close to a quarter of the batters he faced (24.7%) while walking only 3.4%. He never looked overpowering, but terrific control of his pitches helped him to thrive. So far in 2025, his strikeout and walk rates look a lot like they did before his move to the starting rotation last July: Time Period K% BB% Through July 28 in 2024 19.7% 8.1% First Five Starts in 2025 19.5% 8.0% Needless to say, this isn't a promising development. If you’ll remember, the beginning of 2024 was hardly a successful period for Francis. In his first 38.2 innings, he pitched to a 5.82 ERA and a 5.34 FIP. Statcast expected wOBA (and by extension, xERA) takes into account a pitcher's quality of contact allowed, as well as his strikeout and walk data. Given everything I've just outlined about Francis’s 2025 performance, it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that his xwOBA has been steadily rising throughout the season: During his start on April 18 against the Mariners – on the surface, a six-inning, one-run gem – Francis's 100-PA rolling xwOBA reached a new career high. It continued to climb in his latest start against the Astros last week. One thing that xwOBA won't tell you is that Francis has given up a troubling amount of pulled contact on balls hit in the air. His pull rate on fly balls and line drives is up to 55.3% this year, compared to 42.6% last year (per FanGraphs). The league average rate is about 31%. This likely has something to do with the fact that batters are swinging at his pitches further out in front of the plate. According to Baseball Savant, his average incept point in 2024 was 4.9 inches in front of home. This year, that number is 7.5 inches. On a related note, opposing hitters are swinging at fewer of Francis's pitches this season; his swing rate has decreased from 51.7% to 44.8%. Yet, when they do choose to swing, they are taking better hacks. His opponents have a higher fast swing rate and a higher squared-up rate so far in 2025. That combination has led to a large increase in what Baseball Savant calls "blast rate." Blasts, as you can imagine, are a particularly dangerous form of contact. All of this – from the increased pull rate to the increased blast rate – suggests that hitters are seeing Francis much better than they did last year. A keen ability to fool his opponents was the driving force behind Francis’s success in 2024. Individually, none of his pitches were especially nasty. Yet, he was a perfect example of how a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. As Mario Delgado Genzor pointed out for Baseball Prospectus, a “basic visual evaluation” might miss the fact that Francis was superb at deceiving his opponents thanks to elite arsenal coherence and tunneling. Indeed, Francis ranked highly in both the Movement Spread and Velocity Spread metrics at BP, with Stephen Sutton-Brown noting that, “Francis excels by carefully tweaking his pitch mix against lefties and righties, featuring the splitter much more heavily to lefties and the slider more to righties. Each tunnels perfectly against his fastball while varying in total movement and velocity, keeping batters on their toes and helping him consistently outperform the quality of his stuff.” All that to say, it's worrisome to think that batters are seeing Francis's pitches better this season. If his opponents can figure out what he’s throwing, he's lost his greatest advantage. He doesn't have the pure stuff to beat them without the element of surprise on his side. The biggest problem seems to be Francis’s splitter. He is throwing the pitch almost two miles per hour slower than he did last season. The results have been poor: Time Period wOBA xwOBA After July 29 in 2024 .093 .201 First Five Starts in 2025 .385 .419 Difference +.292 +.218 Sometimes, it works for a pitcher to increase the velocity differential between his fastball and an offspeed pitch. Yet, in this case, I wonder if Francis's decreased splitter velocity is precisely what has allowed his opponents to better distinguish between his four-seam and split-finger, thereby helping them pounce on (or lay off) either pitch. Moreover, as Sutton-Brown mentioned, Francis thrived last season by switching up his pitch mix against right and left-handed batters. This year, he is using essentially the same approach against righties and lefties alike: He's throwing his four-seam about 60% of the time, his splitter about 25% of the time, and his curveball about 15% of the time, with a few sliders and sinkers mixed in. That’s not so different from the approach he took against lefties last year. However, when he had the platoon advantage in 2024, his pitch mix was far more diverse. Both his slider and sinker also played meaningful roles in his repertoire. Without those additional weapons to diversify his movement and velocity spreads, Francis has fewer options to keep righty batters on their toes. Now, let me ask you again: Are you worried about Bowden Francis? For your sake, I still hope the answer is no. I hope my worries prove to be unfounded. But until I see Francis fooling hitters like he did last season, my concerns aren't going to go away. View full article

The Blue Jays have to remember there’s more to hitting a baseball than just hitting the baseball. The Blue Jays need to score some runs. File that away under “obvious comments I will nonetheless continue to make until things improve.” With an average of 3.5 runs per game (as of Friday), their offense ranks 25th in MLB and last in the AL East. They have been shut out twice and beaten by five or more runs on four separate occasions. Their -16 run differential suggests they’re lucky to be only one game below .500. According to the Pythagorean Theorem of Baseball, their expected winning percentage is just .417. That’s a 68-win pace. The big problem, which Jesse Burrill wrote about earlier this month, is a lack of power. The Blue Jays rank second-to-last in baseball with 13 home runs and a .103 isolated power (ISO). Their hard-hit rate is poor. Their launch angles are sub-optimal. Their barrel rate is the worst in the American League. Those who think metrics like exit velocity and launch angle are gobbledygook might be confused as to why the Blue Jays are floundering. After all, their .242 team batting average is slightly above league average. Even better, they are one of only four MLB teams with a strikeout rate below 20%. Their 23% whiff rate is the third-lowest in baseball and the best in the American League. Let me recap: When the Blue Jays step up to the plate, they are more likely than the average team to record a hit. When the Blue Jays swing the bat, there’s a good chance they aren’t going to miss. That’s great, isn't it? Not exactly. As counterintuitive as it might sound, there’s more to hitting a baseball than just hitting the baseball. The 2025 Blue Jays are learning that lesson the hard way. The Blue Jays rank among the top 10 teams in MLB in overall swing rate. However, they rank fifth in swing rate outside the strike zone and only 16th in swing rate inside the strike zone (per Baseball Savant). Their zone-swing to outside-swing ratio ranks fourth worst in the sport. In other words, the Jays have employed a shoddy approach at the plate – even though their walk-to-strikeout ratio is second best in the American League. If you prefer a more refined plate discipline metric, I’ll point you in the direction of Robert Orr’s SEAGER, which you can read all about at Baseball Prospectus. SEAGER takes a more nuanced approach than simply comparing in-zone and out-of-zone swing tendencies, but for our purposes, it comes to the same conclusion. Toronto ranks among the bottom five teams in SEAGER in 2025. Let’s get back to that low whiff rate I mentioned earlier. The Blue Jays’ offense hasn’t done many things well this season, but I always give credit where credit is due: Their bat-to-ball skills have been excellent. Yet, a high contact rate mixed with poor plate discipline is both a blessing and a curse. The Jays rank sixth in MLB in in-zone contact rate. That’s good! Batters accrue positive run value when they make contact on pitches in the strike zone. The problem is that the Blue Jays lead the league in chase contact rate. That’s less good. Sure, making contact with a pitch outside the strike zone is better than chasing and missing, but it’s far from ideal. Batters accrue negative run value when they make contact on pitches outside the strike zone. It's not hard to see why. For one thing, contact on pitches outside the strike zone is more likely to be foul; best-case scenario, that’s a neutral outcome for the hitter. The bigger issue, however, is the vast difference in quality of contact on balls hit into play. League-wide, batters have a .376 wOBA this season on in-zone contact. Conversely, they have a .282 wOBA on chase contact. This makes a particularly big difference in terms of power production. In-zone contact has a .223 ISO this season. (For context, a Silver Slugger-winning Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had a .221 ISO in 2024) Chase contact, on the other hand, has a mere .097 ISO. (For context, a slumping Bo Bichette had a .096 ISO in 2024.) Want to slug like 2024 Vladdy? Crush pitches inside the strike zone. Want to hit like 2024 Bichette? What are you talking about? Nobody wants to hit like 2024 Bichette. The Blue Jays swing at pitches outside of the strike zone more than most other teams. They make contact on those swings more than any other team. That goes a long way toward explaining why their power numbers have been so poor to start the year. Too much of their contact is coming on pitches they can’t pummel. And if they can’t fix this soon, the situation is likely only going to get worse. Their .302 wOBA on chase contact is slightly above the league average. However, their .269 xwOBA on chase contact portends disaster. Another related explanation for the lack of thump is that Blue Jays' swings aren't geared toward power; it's not just what they're swinging at, but how they're swinging. They rank last in MLB with a 70.3-mph average bat speed. Their average swing length is the shortest in the American League. Short, controlled swings have surely helped the Jays maintain their high contact rate, but hacks like that don’t lend themselves well to power production. You know who takes short, slow cuts? Luis Arraez. You know who takes long, fast hacks? Shohei Ohtani. So, what do the Blue Jays need to do differently? They’d surely be better off swinging at fewer bad pitches, although that’s easier said than done. Perhaps a more realistic goal for the immediate future could be for Toronto to prioritize faster, longer swings – in other words, to prioritize impact over contact. That’s going to mean more swing-and-miss, but considering the poor quality of so many of the pitches the Blue Jays have put into play… well, whiffing isn’t any worse than hitting yet another pop-up or grounding into yet another double play. More to the point, the pros of a power-oriented approach could far outweigh the cons. This, too, is easier said than done, of course. Not every player can just decide to swing harder or significantly alter their swing at the drop of a hat. Still, increasing swing speed and length are two tangible changes David Popkins can set as goals for his hitters. Simply put, what the Blue Jays are doing right now isn’t working, and they can afford to sacrifice some contact for more extra-base hits. Like I said, there’s more to hitting a baseball than just hitting the baseball. Let's hope this team can figure that out before it's too late. Stats and rankings updated prior to game time on Friday, April 25. View full article

The Blue Jays have struggled terribly against right-handed pitching this season. With his home run on Tuesday, Nathan Lukes showed how he can be a small part of the solution. Last week, Nathan Lukes had a baby. On Tuesday night, it was his turn to deliver. The center fielder crushed a Ronel Blanco curveball into the right field bleachers. It was his first home run of the season and the first by a Blue Jays batter in 177 plate appearances. It would also turn out to be the only run Toronto could push across the plate against the Astros in a 5-1 loss. All things considered, Toronto isn’t asking a lot of Lukes. He typically bats eighth or ninth in the order. He hasn’t had to face a left-handed pitcher all season. All he really has to do is keep center field warm until Daulton Varsho is ready to return. At that point, he’ll most likely head back to Triple-A. Still, it would be terrific for the Blue Jays and their struggling offense if Tuesday’s home run was a sign that Lukes is heating up. Lukes took 91 trips to the plate in 2024. He was one of Toronto's most productive bats from his call-up on August 30 through the end of the season. The Jays weren't playing for anything but their dignity at that point, but Lukes helped make a rough stretch more watchable. He hit .303 with an .818 OPS and a 132 wRC+. His .326 xwOBA was more good than great, but his bat-to-ball skills looked legit. He struck out in fewer than 10% of his plate appearances, and his whiff rate (14.8%) and expected batting average (.284) both would have ranked above the 90th percentile if he had anywhere close to enough playing time to qualify. His numbers looked even better – albeit in an even smaller sample size – if you only considered his performance against right-handed pitching. The lefty batter went 21-for-64 with the platoon advantage, drawing eight walks to just six strikeouts. His .871 OPS against righties ranked second on the team last year, behind only Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Keep the tiny sample size (77 PA) in mind, but Lukes flashed real productivity at the plate. It’s not as if his hot bat came out of nowhere, either. Lukes had hit .333 with a 135 wRC+ in 54 Triple-A games before his call-up in 2024. He looked just as good the year before, hitting .366 with a 146 wRC+ in 48 Triple-A contests. Since the start of the 2023 season, only two players (minimum 100 PA) have a higher wRC+ for the Buffalo Bisons: Spencer Horwitz and Alan Roden. Lukes performed well enough at Triple-A and in his brief MLB cameo to earn some solid offensive projections entering 2025. The Steamer projection system at FanGraphs envisioned a 107 wRC+. The ZiPS projections were even more optimistic, forecasting a 109 wRC+. Like every other number I’ve mentioned in this piece, take those projections with a grain of salt. Small sample size affects projection systems too. They can only work with the information they have, and in Lukes’s case, they didn’t have much MLB data at their disposal. All the same, his offensive projections were encouraging. A capable center fielder who provides above-average offense from the bottom of the order is a valuable piece to have around. Four weeks into the season, those projections have only gotten better, despite Lukes's .200/.306/.333 slash line. His rest-of-season ZiPS wRC+ is up to 112, while his Steamer wRC+ is up to 113. Don't get too excited – this has more to do with the projections adjusting to the 2025 offensive environment than anything Lukes has done himself. That said, his .332 xwOBA is significantly better than his .290 wOBA. His .287 xBA is much more impressive than his Mendoza-flirting .200 batting average. He has drawn as many free passes (walks + hit-by-pitches) as strikeouts. So, in spite of his mediocre results this year, there’s a lot to like about what we’ve glimpsed from Lukes. He is seeing the ball well, hitting the ball well, and deserves better results than he has achieved. Perhaps the projection systems agree. Lukes isn’t going to be the solution to this team's offensive woes. He’s not going to make up for key players like Anthony Santander and Alejandro Kirk slumping at the plate. Still, he might have the skills to be a valuable contributor in a part-time role. And the Blue Jays can use all the help they can get from the left-hand side. You might be surprised to learn that the Blue Jays' offense has been quite dominant against left-handed pitching this year. Their .384 OBP against southpaws is the best in baseball, while their .806 OPS and 140 wRC+ both put them among the top three teams. Against right-handed pitching, however, they rank among the bottom 10 teams in all three triple-slash categories. Their .621 OPS puts them third to last, while their 83 wRC+ is 17% worse than league average. That's bad. Hopefully, things will get better as the year goes on. The lefty-batting Varsho will be back on the field soon enough. That will help. The switch-hitting Santander can't possibly continue to slump this badly. He's bound to bounce back. That would help too. But the Blue Jays can't count on time to fix everything. Their struggles against right-handed pitching aren't just bad luck. They are a direct result of the way this roster was constructed. Three of the top four hitters on the team (Guerrero, Bo Bichette, and George Springer) bat from the right side. Other than Santander and Lukes, their lefty-batting options include the soft-hitting Andrés Giménez and inexperienced youngsters Roden, Will Wagner, and Addison Barger. This team was always going to be weaker against right-handed pitching. Even so, they have to be better than they've been so far. They need someone, ideally multiple someones, to step up. Luke doesn’t need to be the hitter he was last September. He doesn’t need to be the hitter he was at Triple-A in 2023 and '24. But if he can come anywhere close to meeting the projections that saw him as an above-average platoon bat, he could make a meaningful difference for this offense against right-handed pitching – perhaps even enough of a difference for him to stick in the majors when Varsho returns. View full article

Blue Jays starters have thrown at least five innings in all but two games this year. As their depth is tested, can the rotation continue pitching deep into games? The Toronto Blue Jays have played 24 games this season. Their starting pitchers have thrown at least five innings in all but two of those contests. No team in baseball has gotten more five-inning outings from its starting staff. José Berríos and Chris Bassitt have each gone five deep in all five of their starts. Most notably, Berríos fought his way to five innings on Opening Day, despite giving up runs in each of the first four frames. Bassitt, the surprise ace of the staff so far, faced his toughest challenge of the season last night, making it through 5 ⅓ despite a three-run first inning. Kevin Gausman has tossed 31 ⅓ innings over five starts, pitching into the sixth inning each time. That includes a strenuous game against the Mets, in which he failed to strike out a single batter, and a challenging start against the Astros earlier this week, in which he gave up a season-high three walks and four earned runs. He muscled his way through a four-run fifth inning in Houston and then threw a clean sixth for good measure. Bowden Francis has also pitched into the sixth in each of his appearances, though he, too, has faced adversity at times. His walks are up compared to last season, and he has already given up five home runs in four games. Even Easton Lucas went at least five innings in each of his first three career starts. His 5 ⅓-inning showing against the Red Sox was the deepest outing of his professional career. He also demonstrated tenacity against the Braves last week, making his way to the end of the fifth despite giving up eight earned runs that day. Indeed, the fact that Toronto’s starters have been able to work five innings, even on days they haven’t had their best stuff, is a big part of what makes this all so impressive. The only two times this season that John Schneider had to remove his starter before the sixth inning were when Max Scherzer exited early due to injury and when the inexperienced Lucas simply hit his breaking point this past Sunday. This is all by design. Berríos, Gausman, and Bassitt are workhorses. That’s why the Blue Jays acquired them. Since 2023, they rank second, fourth, and sixth, respectively, among AL starters in innings pitched. Scherzer might not fit into the workhorse category anymore, but he knows as well as anyone what it means to be a durable starting pitcher. He’s travelling with the team right now, despite his injury status, and there is little doubt the Blue Jays value his mentorship in the clubhouse almost as much as his presence on the mound. The Blue Jays seem to be raising their younger starters with similar workhorse values. Francis has pitched at least five innings in 15 of his 17 career starts. Meanwhile, the fact that Lucas went five deep in each of his first three outings is perhaps even stronger proof of how highly the Blue Jays value five-inning starts. Prior to joining the Blue Jays organization, he had never thrown more than four innings in a game in his professional career. *** Blue Jays starters rank fifth in the majors in innings pitched this year. They’re sixth in innings pitched per game. But I wonder if “five-inning outings” is a more useful metric for evaluating a starting rotation’s ability to work deep into games. A team that gets seven innings from its starting pitcher one day and three innings the next would have the same total of starter innings as a team that gets five innings from its starter day in and day out. Yet, the second hypothetical team is in a stronger position to make a bullpen plan – and stick to it. For what it’s worth, Toronto’s bullpen has looked much improved so far this season. After finishing last in the AL (yes, even worse than the White Sox) with a 4.82 ERA and -2.5 FanGraphs WAR in 2024, Blue Jays relievers have a perfectly respectable 3.68 ERA in 2025. Even better than their ERA is their collective 1.63 Win Probability Added, which ranks second in the AL. They also rank fifth in the Junior Circuit in Statcast expected ERA and first in Skill-Interactive ERA (SIERA). At this point in the season, those are all more meaningful numbers than bullpen ERA, which can be easily skewed by a few bad games or a few bad performers. Could the arm barn’s early-season success have anything to do with the fact that the starters are pitching deeper into games on a more consistent basis? Last year, when the bullpen was a disaster, Blue Jays starters tied for 10th in the AL with 115 five-inning starts. They're on pace for 149 such starts in 2025. That pace won't last, but that's beside the point. Toronto's relievers are thriving right now because the starters are putting them in a better position to do so. Without a doubt, many more factors are at play that can help explain the bullpen’s improvement, but I’m inclined to believe the starters have at least a little something to do with it. Now for the million-dollar question: Will the Blue Jays’ starters continue to support their relievers with consistent, five-inning starts? It’s a pretty safe bet that Gausman, Berríos, Bassitt, and even Francis will continue to do so. But then we get to the problem. To pitch five innings every day, the Blue Jays need five starters. They currently only have four. Thanks to a couple of off days coming up, the Jays could theoretically survive with a four-man rotation until May 3. That buys them some time, but not much. It’s highly unlikely Scherzer would be ready to pitch by then. Lucas could theoretically make another start (he'll be eligible to return from his optional assignment by early May), but presumably, the team optioned him to allow him to get some extended run as a starter at Triple-A. Furthermore, the Blue Jays might not want to wait that long to choose a new fifth starter. Schneider has made it clear he does not want to overwork Gausman, Berríos, Bassitt, and Francis. After all, he needs them fresh enough to pitch five innings on the days they do take the mound. So, who could step into the Blue Jays rotation, potentially as early as next week? Not long ago, Yariel Rodríguez might have seemed like the most obvious candidate. However, he has struggled pitching out of the bullpen this season. Moreover, the Blue Jays could have moved him back to the rotation when Scherzer initially got hurt. The fact that they kept him in the 'pen suggests they’re focused on his potential as a reliever right now. That’s not too surprising, considering how often he struggled to escape the fifth inning in his starts last year. Right-hander Jake Bloss is one of the most promising pitching prospects in the system, but he has yet to pitch more than 4 ⅔ innings in a game since he joined the Blue Jays organization. MLB.com’s Keegan Matheson mentioned 25-year-old righty Lazaro Estrada as another prospect to watch. Yet, he, like Bloss, has not yet demonstrated he can reach the five-inning threshold in a Triple-A outing. Perhaps, then, the two most likely rotation options to keep an eye on are Paxton Schultz and Eric Lauer. Schultz dazzled in 4 ⅓ innings of relief in his MLB debut. Although it’s been a while since he was a full-time starting pitcher, he has experience pitching into the sixth at Triple-A – unlike Bloss and Estrada. Lauer would be the more conventional choice, although he would require a spot on the 40-man roster. The 29-year-old, who signed a minor league deal with the Jays last December, has pitched five innings in each of his past three starts with the Buffalo Bisons. Over 112 big league starts from 2018-23, he averaged just over five innings per outing. To fans who have been following baseball for decades, five innings might not feel like a long start. Yet, in this day and age, a starter who goes five deep is a starter who’s done his job. So far in 2025, no team’s starters have done that job better than Toronto’s. Indeed, getting deep outings from their starters seems to be a key component of the Blue Jays’ overall pitching strategy. Now that their depth at the back of the rotation is being tested, it will be more important than ever that Gausman, Berríos, Bassitt, and Francis continue to provide consistent innings four out of every five days. View full article