Matthew Creally

As the days following the Winter Meetings unfolded, all indications pointed toward the Toronto Blue Jays following through on their desire to pick up a big-time free agent reliever. One by one, the chips had begun to fall, with Ryan Helsley and Devin Williams coming off the market before the epicenter of the baseball world shifted to Orlando. Edwin Diaz and Robert Suarez followed earlier this week. The anticipation finally subsided north of the border on Friday with the news of submariner Tyler Rogers inking a 3-year, $37M deal. On Saturday afternoon, The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal revealed the terms of a vesting option for 2029 that would pay Rogers an additional $12M if he pitches either 110 combined games between 2027 and 2028, or 60 games in 2028. Since his debut in August 2019, Rogers has not pitched fewer than 68 games in a full season. He will be 38 by the time the 2029 season rolls around, so that vesting option is essentially the Blue Jays telling him he'll be rewarded with another year if he keeps posting this often by the time he's within striking distance of 40 years old. Buckle up: The jokes and fan activation opportunities that come from Rogers sharing a last name with his new team's ownership conglomerate are soon to rain down on all of us. They might be easy to stomach, though, because (Tyler) Rogers is a very good pitcher who immediately makes this bullpen stronger. He has a 2.76 ERA and 3.31 FIP for his career, easily better than Jeff Hoffman, Yimi Garcia, Louis Varland, and any notable external addition the Shapiro/Atkins regime has made to the bullpen since the pandemic (with all due respect to those guys, who should form one of the better units in the league next year). At no point during this recent stretch of Blue Jays baseball has there been a relief pitcher with a track record as consistently good as Rogers'. He was working on his second consecutive season with a sub-3 ERA when he was traded from the Giants to the Mets this past deadline, and ended up finishing with a sub-2 ERA while leading the NL in appearances for the 4th time in 6 years. Now that we've established some of what Rogers is, I'm going to mention one key thing that he isn't, because it provides some crucial context that is necessary to make sense of this deal: He was not the Blue Jays' first choice in the free agent relief market. According to Sportsnet's Shi Davidi, the team was actively courting Robert Suarez before he signed with Atlanta, and Rogers was their pivot in the event Suarez signed elsewhere. This news comes about a month after they reportedly met with Edwin Diaz's agents at the GM meetings in Las Vegas. With a strong crop of free agent bullpen arms this year, there are certainly more traditional "stuff-ists" that could prove to be more of a bargain than Rogers. For how disappointing the results were for Devin Williams in 2025, he still struck out 35% of batters and maintained elite peripherals, is just a year removed from being widely considered a top-2 closer in the game, and signed for a considerably cheaper commitment than Diaz. The Detroit Tigers transformed Kyle Finnegan post-deadline and retained him on a 2-year deal worth less than $20M total. Brad Keller, who only just turned 30, is still available after a dominant season in Chicago. Still, league-wide demand for high-leverage relievers is enough that every established name on the market has been getting multi-year deals, even the ones coming off down years. Rogers, like Suarez, will be 35 on opening day, and giving a 3-year deal to a 35-year-old reliever isn't the best idea in a vacuum. However, I would much rather give him 3 years than Suarez, mostly because of something alluded to earlier: His durability. Rogers has not been on the injured list since 2015, and leads relievers in both innings pitched and appearances over the past 5 years. Suarez also relies on elite velocity, sitting 98-99 MPH on both his fastball and his sinker. This could become problematic if he continues to rely on both pitches a combined 3/4 of the time and loses some firepower on the wrong side of age 35. Rogers, a submarine pitcher who has maxed out in the mid-80s his whole career without any issues, does not have this concern. If there's any reliever from this free agent class I'd bet on at least staying in their current general neighbourhood of effectiveness by the end of their new contract, it's probably him. Much has been made of Rogers' -61° arm angle, which changes everything about how he should be valued because his pitches do not move at all like they are supposed to. He's a 2-pitch, sinker-slider guy, using the former way more than the latter. The sinker averaged 84 MPH last year; the slider 74 MPH. Of course, this does not matter, because the sinker moves like a mid-80s 12-6 curveball while the slider rises with extreme cut, with both practically being released from the ground. He is truly one-of-a-kind in this way. It's that bizarre delivery that has allowed him to become about as consistent as a reliever can be over the past few years. He absolutely pounds the zone, with a career walk rate of 4.4% that cratered even further recently, sitting at 2.2% since the start of 2024. Of all bullpen pitchers with at least 200 IP since the start of 2021, Rogers' average exit velocity against ranks 2nd-lowest. His launch angle against is 8th-lowest. His barrel rate? Also 2nd-lowest. Hard-hit rate? 6th-lowest. Yet, he has surrendered 1191 balls in play in that timespan, 199 more than Brent Suter, the next-closest guy on the list - and the same difference between 2nd and 15th. One of the reasons command and pitch-to-contact arms, especially if they're relievers, aren't valued as highly as they once were is their approach leads to greater variability. More hittable pitches and more balls in play equals a greater risk of the opponent stringing hits together, doing damage, or both. For a half-decade, way longer than any other pitch-to-contact reliever in the game, Rogers has found a way to defy this law because of how hard his movement patterns are on hitters' eyes by virtue of his release point. It's entirely possible the standard of variance that non-strikeout arms sign up for simply doesn't apply to him to the same degree, and the infield defense he'll have behind him makes him an even more logical fit for the Blue Jays. Tyler Rogers Percentiles, 2023-25 (Statcast) Year BB% GB% EV Hard Hit% Barrel% 2025 100 98 99 95 100 2024 100 93 99 95 93 2023 83 89 99 98 100 This wholesale prevention of quality contact has allowed Rogers to maintain a lower-than-average rate of home runs per flyball for his entire career. The Blue Jays' relief core hemorrhaged damage in 2024 and it still wasn't fully immune in that regard despite making it to the World Series this year. The front office saw a chance to acquire someone who can fix a good chunk of that problem by himself and didn't pass it up. Blue Jays Bullpen & Tyler Rogers Home Run Rates, 2023-25 (Fangraphs) Year TOR Bullpen HR/9 TOR Bullpen HR/FB Rogers HR/9 Rogers HR/FB 2025 1.04 11.4% 0.47 9.1% 2024 1.46 14.8% 0.90 10.6% 2023 1.15 12.2% 0.85 9.7% The effect his delivery has on batters seems counterintuitive because of how slow his pitches move, but he's arguably better at routinely inducing late swings than anyone in MLB. A common proxy to measure hitter timing is attack angle, one of Statcast's new bat path metrics that measures the vertical direction of the bat's sweet spot at contact (not to be confused with swing tilt). Hitters had a 0° attack angle against Rogers in 2025, lowest among any pitcher to face at least 200 batters. They made contact deeper towards the plate against Rogers than they did anyone except Chris Martin and Tim Hill, and when adjusting contact point for velocity (slower pitches are naturally struck farther in front of the plate), opponents were later against Rogers than anyone who surrendered 100 balls in play. Aside from the immense degree to which it serves himself, Rogers' alien release point allows the coaching staff to mix and match the looks on the pitching staff. Arranging a bullpen with this in mind is a strategy popularized by the successful Rays and Brewers teams of the early 2020s - clubs that never spent on high-leverage relievers in free agency, but found a way to make it work by plugging holes with a diverse set of arm angles. Shi Davidi reported earlier this month that the Jays are trying to follow this blueprint, which makes the recent acquisitions of Rogers and Chase Lee, as well as the use of a first-round pick on Trey Yesavage, quite intuitive. Blue Jays Pitchers by Arm Angle (°, Statcast) LHP Arm Angle RHP Arm Angle Eric Lauer 39 Trey Yesavage 63 Brendon Little 33 Dylan Cease 51 Mason Fluharty 33 Braydon Fisher 49 Cody Ponce 45* Tommy Nance 42 Louis Varland 41 Shane Bieber 39 Jose Berrios 39 Jeff Hoffman 37 Kevin Gausman 37 Yimi Garcia 27 Tyler Rogers -61 No, he does not provide the velocity and strikeout stuff the Blue Jays' bullpen was lacking to an extent, but the chances of a positive return on that $12.3M average annual value seem likely. Toronto continues to pay pitchers for showing consistent availability, which makes it seem silly in hindsight that both the Cease and Rogers contracts weren't plainly visible from a mile away. Aggressively paying relievers left and right generally isn't good practice considering how often and how long they suit up for, but big-picture, the Jays are doing a good job of straddling the line between the various bullpen-building strategies: Make no mistake, they have chosen to pounce on some free agents (Hoffman, Garcia, Rogers), but some are reclamation projects (Nance, Lauer), while others are young, home-grown talent (Little, Fluharty, Fisher). It's good that the team still has money for their needs on the position player side now that the most pressing requirements on the pitching side are taken care of. Rogers may not have been the best option available, but he undeniably makes this team better and flashes considerable potential to make this a wise investment for the duration of his term, especially considering some of the other avenues the Jays could have pursued. View full article

The Toronto Blue Jays added $37M to their fast-growing payroll Friday night, but just a few hours before that, they completed their first trade of the offseason. Right-hander Chase Lee is on his way over from the Tigers, with lefty relief prospect Johan Simon going the other way. It's a 1-for-1 swap of bullpen arms. Here's the skinny on Lee: He's 27 years old and made his MLB debut in 2025, so he has 6 years left of team control. He pitched in low leverage for Detroit and while his first taste of the majors wasn't a disaster by any stretch, he did get knocked around a bit (4.10 ERA, 5.16 xERA, 4.53 FIP). However, he was good enough at AAA to warrant a call-up, with a career strikeout rate just under 30% in parts of 4 seasons. He managed a 20.7% K-BB there in 2025 despite a 6.47 ERA, which ballooned thanks in large part to a wild 48% strand rate. The Tigers, choosing to trust the strong peripherals, gave him a look, and here we are. The thing about Lee is he's a side-armer. His 80-MPH sweeper is his best weapon, averaging a whopping 19 inches of glove-side movement from a -4° arm angle. He has a sinker which sits 89 MPH with plenty of drop from that low arm slot, and he also uses a four-seamer to change hitters' eye levels, as well as a changeup against lefties. Pitch quality models are torn as to which fastball is better; he deployed the four-seam more to lefties while the sinker was his go-to against righties, but the sweeper plays. It got a 120 score from Fangraphs Stuff+ in 2025, while PitchingBot's Stuff model gave it a 60 on the 20-80 scale. Lee was able to crack Baseball America's list of top 30 Tigers prospects earlier this year, mostly because of how much upside the sweeper has. He also got 60-grade control from BA's panel of scouts, and since getting traded from Texas to Detroit in the Andrew Chafin deal in 2024, he has put up zone rates in the high-50s at every level he has pitched. He throws a lot of strikes, but unlike most side-armers, he got plenty of strikeouts coming up through the minors. He ran into one too many barrels once he got to the majors (13.9% Barrel/BBE, 2nd percentile), but with a plus breaking ball and multiple fastball shapes from an unfamiliar release point, the best is yet to come. The Blue Jays entered Friday with the likes of Hoffman, Varland, Garcia, Little, Fluharty, Fisher, Nance, and Lauer crowding the bullpen depth chart. On top of that, they just selected Spencer Miles in the Rule 5 draft. Lee has minor league options to spare, and he wound up being the first of two relievers with a negative arm angle that Toronto acquired in short succession, and the other one is making 8 figures for the next 3 years. It's safe to assume he'll start 2026 in Buffalo, but the potential is there for him to become a big-league middle reliever in the near future. What's interesting about this deal is to acquire this low-slot reliever with a nasty breaking ball, it cost the Blue Jays . . . a low-slot reliever with a nasty breaking ball. Johan Simon is a 24-year-old lefty who saw AA action for the first time this year, and it went swimmingly (2.38 ERA, 32.7% K, 11.1 IP). He had to spend parts of 4 years in rookie ball to get a walk problem under control, not seeing class-A until 8 months ago, so he's far from a finished product. Of all pitching prospects who threw at least 250 sliders in 2025, Simon's slider was the very best according to Baseball America's Stuff+ model. It touches the mid-80s from a low 3/4 delivery, making it an absolute nightmare for lefty hitters. He hopped from Dunedin to Vancouver to New Hampshire this summer so he's certainly on a positive trajectory, but the injuries and inconsistency that kept him in rookie ball have prevented him from becoming a ranked prospect to this point. This seems like a smart deal for both teams involving two high-upside pitchers who are fairly similar, albeit with different handedness and at different points of their careers. Detroit needed to clear a 40-man roster spot to make the re-signing of reliever Kyle Finnegan a possibility, and both teams still get the chance to develop an under-the-radar reliever with a great sweeper. Lee won't get a long MLB leash on a team urgently trying to win such as the Blue Jays, but he figures to be on the short list whenever injuries arise or the flexibility of having an optionable piece is needed. View full article

There is still so much to be determined about the Toronto Blue Jays' offseason. With the annual Winter Meetings having just wrapped up, plenty of time remains to see what paths the club will take to prepare for its defense of the AL pennant. However, it's very likely they have already made their biggest value move of the winter. Right-handed pitcher Cody Ponce is coming back across the Pacific for his second stint in the big leagues on a three-year, $30M deal, following a standout season in the KBO that won him their MVP award. DiamondCentric's own Brock Beauchamp and Owen Hill have already done some preliminary analysis on Ponce; you should read their articles if you aren't caught up on his profile (here and here). Ponce is coming off one of the best seasons a pitcher has ever had in the KBO. Across 29 starts that spanned 180 innings, he recorded a 1.89 ERA, striking out 36.2% of batters, walking just 5.9%, and allowing only 10 home runs. FanGraphs' batted ball pages show that he induced groundballs at a 45.7% clip, a notable increase from his 40.4% career mark in MLB. His rate of flyballs on the infield also increased. His hard contact rate fell off the table. Thanks to pitching analyst Lance Brozdowski, we have some information on how Ponce went from being a castaway with a career MLB ERA of 5.86 to a KBO MVP. His average fastball velocity rose up a couple ticks, sitting at 95.5 mph and maxing out at 98. He added a new high-80s kick changeup. He makes use of five pitches in total, and could tinker with his arsenal to reacclimate to the big league level next year. The fact that he possesses plus velocity, intriguing off-speed shape, and arsenal diversity makes him projectable in both starting and relief roles. The changeup could prove to be Ponce's most consequential adjustment. When he was pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, lefty hitters slashed .297/.336/.703 against him, striking out only 14.4% of the time. A better weapon to neutralize the handedness disadvantage would go a long way toward making him a serviceable pitcher in MLB, so the news of his revamped changeup is a big deal because his struggles against lefties were a primary reason why it didn't work out for him the first time. Brozdowski mentions in his newsletter that his data shows Ponce's changeup averaged around 1300 rpm, but multiple big league teams that have access to other proprietary KBO pitch-tracking information have it closer to 800. Eno Sarris, analytics guru for The Athletic, has a separate data source that had the spin on Ponce's changeup even lower, down into 600 rpm territory. As such, I'm going to assume with reasonable confidence that the spin rate on this pitch is less than 1000 rpm. There are no public-facing pitch quality models for the KBO, but we have enough shape metrics here to draw comparisons. Using the past two seasons as my sample, I looked for off-speed pitches in MLB with profiles that closely align with Ponce's: velocity between 85 and 91 mph, induced vertical break between -1" and 5", arm-side break between 5" and 11", and less than 1000 rpm. I also focused my search on pitchers with similar deliveries to Ponce, only looking for arms that went 3" in either direction of Ponce's 6.3' release height and 6.5' extension. Only two pitchers met these criteria, and both throw splitters. Take a look: Name Season Pitch Type RV Stuff+ MPH RPM IVB Arm-Side HB Justin Martinez 2024 Splitter 6 136 89.8 845 2.2 8.3 Hurston Waldrep 2025 Splitter 3 125 86.8 762 2.0 6.3 Cody Ponce 2025 Changeup 87.6 <1000 2.0 8.5 Stuff+ via FanGraphs Blue Jays fans should be ecstatic about this. Martinez could release a feature film with the number of times he has been posted by Pitching Ninja, and Waldrep ran a 48.3 K% with his splitter in 2025. Both comps' off-speed pitches score as some of the sharpest in the game according to stuff models, which generates some intrigue about Ponce's ceiling. The jump in fastball velocity is another reason why he's coming back to the highest level. His four-seamer averaged 93.2 when he was last here, so it's encouraging to have seen it closer to the upper 90s in Korea. Seventeen inches of carry with 95-96 on the radar gun is a recipe for a good fastball, except, as Brozdowski notes, the KBO ball is slightly different from the one MLB uses. That means Ponce should expect to achieve less rise on the pitch in North America, all else equal. Brozdowski projects 16 inches of carry and 9.5 inches of arm-side movement. While that's still an upgrade over the heater Ponce was using with the Pirates, it's not exactly inspiring. In terms of stuff, it compares well with a couple of pitchers in the Giants organization: Name Season Pitch Type RV Stuff+ MPH RPM IVB Arm-Side HB Hayden Birdsong 2024 Fastball -3 95 95.8 2291 16.4 9.5 Tristan Beck 2025 Fastball 0 87 94.6 2361 15.7 9.6 Cody Ponce 2025 Fastball 95.5 approx. 16 approx. 9.5 Stuff+ via FanGraphs For reference, Ponce's old fastball received an 87 Stuff+ grade in 2021. Considering these comps, it does not seem likely that he'll be able to rely on this offering as much as he did in 2025, especially when taking the manufacturing differences between the KBO and MLB baseballs into account. This is where I believe most of the grunt work lies for the Blue Jays' pitching department: How will they compensate for decreased four-seam usage? Push the cutter? Introduce a new slider shape? If the fastball touches 98, then it will still be useful on certain occasions, but sequencing is something that Ponce will have to think about differently than he did in Korea, especially if he's going to be a starter. On the other hand, could the Jays opt to worry less about arsenal diversity and plug him into a leverage role in the bullpen? The flexibility he comes with is part of what makes Ponce such a low-risk, high-reward signing. The final aspect of his repertoire data I want to delve into further is the zone rate on his four-seam fastball. According to Brozdowski's data source, it was 47%. This looks low for someone who had an overall 5.9% walk rate, and Brozdowski has conceded that the KBO zone rates he has access to are likely inaccurate due to conflicting reports from other sources. Ponce's four-seamer had a zone rate between 54% and 55% in his time in the big leagues, making those inaccuracies seem feasible. In any case, it's worth evaluating how his ability to throw strikes will translate to the tougher competition of the big leagues. His career walk rate is a considerably-better-than-average 6.9% in 55.1 IP. In three seasons in Japan's NPB from 2022-2024, his walk rate sat firmly between 5% and 7%. Pretty solid and pretty consistent! These hold up well when evaluating Ponce against other Americans who left to reinvent themselves in Korea before coming back stateside. Veteran starter Merrill Kelly, known for his strike-throwing ability, has been solid through seven MLB seasons since his return from the KBO. Erick Fedde and Kyle Hart reached similar heights to Ponce in 2023 and 2024, respectively, before coming back to MLB. Each pitcher had solid walk rates in Korea, and each one of them maintained a similar level of control after making the jump: Name Y KBO BB% Y+1 MLB BB% Merrill Kelly 7.0% 7.3% Erick Fedde 4.9% 7.2% Kyle Hart 6.0% 7.3% Cody Ponce 5.9% If those who came before him are any indication, Ponce's walk rate is not likely to suddenly balloon in Toronto next year. With his imposing swing-and-miss pitch best used against opposite-handed hitters, increased fastball velocity, a solid pitch mix, and a consistent track record of avoiding walks, it's easy to see why the Blue Jays' brass was excited about the opportunity to bring Cody Ponce into the fold. Rogers has money to spend, especially in the wake of the team's run to the 2025 World Series, but their ability to compete with the biggest spenders in the free agent market did not stop them from pursuing a cheaper arm that comes with serious upside. The transition from Korea or Japan to MLB can be tough to size up, and it's not always linear, but there is enough information available about the physical profile of Ponce's weapons, as well as the pitchers whose careers have followed similar trajectories, to be confident in the heights he could reach with the Blue Jays. As this past year showed, supplementary additions can be the difference between being a competitive team and making a run towards a championship, and Ponce has the tools to play an instrumental role on a club with aspirations as high as Toronto's. View full article

Baseball happens fast. One day, the Toronto Blue Jays were celebrating sweet victory over the game's Evil Empire in the ALDS, and not even a week later, they're embarking on a road trip to Seattle with no guarantee of returning to save their season. The odds and recent history of teams coming back after losing the first two games of a best-of-seven series at home have been an exhaustive part of the discourse surrounding this club lately, so let's look ahead to Game 3 – a contest that would change the dynamic of the ALCS with a Blue Jays win. The man leading this mission is Shane Bieber, who enjoyed a solid initial return from Tommy John surgery and made seven starts for Toronto down the stretch. His lone start in the ALDS, however, was not good; he allowed three runs (two earned) on five hits, recording two strikeouts and a walk in 2.2 innings, taking 54 pitches to get there. Unfortunately, the box score doesn't quite do it justice because nine of the 12 balls in play Bieber surrendered went down as hard-hit. That's 75%! Only four of those 12 batted balls stayed on the ground, and three of them came off the bat at 104 mph or harder. The Yankees timed him up and knocked him around, getting to the bullpen early and winning 9-6 as a result. Bieber's teammates picked him up, as he did for them a couple times late this past summer, and won the series, giving him his biggest chance yet to earn some goodwill among a fanbase that has crashed back down to earth. During his media availability before Game 2 against the Mariners, Bieber said he felt good about his outing in New York from an execution standpoint, essentially saying the ball went where he wanted it to out of his hand. His stuff was fine, with the velocity of all his pitches clocking in slightly above normal and the carry of his fastball remaining sufficient, all good signs for someone coming off a long-term injury. Still, whether he was properly executing is up for debate. Bieber knows himself better than any of us do, and when an accomplished big league pitcher prides himself on his execution in a start that didn't go his way less than 48 hours before the biggest outing of his life, I'm inclined to take his word for it. Regardless, the signs weren't all encouraging. One of Bieber's post-surgery adjustments was the introduction of a kick changeup. It registered six more inches of drop than his previous version of the pitch while maintaining high-80s velocity, and it scored as his best offering according to Stuff+ (103, per FanGraphs). He threw 11 such changeups in Game 3 of the ALDS, and none of them resulted in a called strike or swing and miss. Just three of them were in the strike zone at all; he kept missing up and away to lefties, and two of the ones he zoned left the bat at 104 mph. His fastball fared better, living in the zone far more consistently and leading to some called strikes, but it, too, was hit hard (93 mph AVG EV on 7 BIP). Against lefties, Bieber usually lives on the upper corners of the zone with his heater, while painting the whole outer half against righties. It missed over the plate, both up and down, quite a bit to New York's lefty hitters and sometimes ran in on their righties. The righties and lefties alike jumped on the changes in location. The most important thing Bieber needs to do at T-Mobile Park in Game 3 of this series is get his changeup back in order. It misses bats and generates groundballs more than any other pitch in his arsenal. The Mariners have three home runs from the left side so far in the ALCS, and when Bieber's changeup is on, it can neutralize any lefty. Look for him to throw this pitch down in the zone more often than he did in his last start, out of harm's way but close enough for Seattle to chase. The head-to-head matchup with the switch-hitting Jorge Polanco is particularly intriguing here. He has been hitting out of his mind for the past few days, and his swing from the left side is flatter than average and quicker than his righty swing, which gives him an ideal profile to square up fastballs in the zone but not pitches diving away from him. He also had a swing-and-miss rate just under 40% against changeups and splitters in 2025. This pitch will be key to taking the wind out of the sails of Polanco, as well as Cal Raleigh (who will hit left-handed vs Bieber) and Josh Naylor. Another strategy to watch out for is Bieber's deployment of his cutter. It was only a secondary pitch for him in the regular season, and not one of his main ones either, but he still used it between 10 and 15% of the time to both sides of the plate, especially early in counts. He located it on the outside half of the plate in both platoon matchups, and while opponents frequently sprayed it for line drives, it had the lowest average exit velocity of any pitch in his repertoire. However, it got lost in the shuffle during his last regular season start. He only threw four cutters in that game, and in his ALDS outing, he did away with it entirely, not using it at all at Yankee Stadium. Whether he has simply lost feel for it in recent weeks or this is part of a more deliberate plan of attack is tough to say, but if he's able, it might serve him to use it now. For all the excellence that Raleigh displayed at the plate this year, he hit just .190 when facing cutters, the only pitch type he had a negative run value against. Raleigh's heatmaps show a pronounced power outage on pitches up and in, which would be the natural path of Bieber's cutter if he elevates it on him. Relatively speaking, cutters gave Julio Rodríguez even more fits; he posted a light .115 batting average and .308 slugging percentage against them, striking out nearly 30% of the time on a pitch that isn't designed for swing-and-miss. Rodríguez can do damage and swings very hard, but he chases a lot and doesn't make much contact, making the cutter a logical option to disrupt his timing. There might not be a better time for the cutter to make a return to Bieber's game plan. It should not have taken this long for Seattle to start receiving recognition for how balanced their lineup is. They struck out at a virtually identical clip to the Yankees while hitting for fewer home runs during the regular season, but their 113 wRC+ placed third in MLB. They were top-five in bat speed this year as well, and looking at their lineup hitter by hitter clearly shows why they're dangerous. Their biggest contributors this series (Raleigh, Polanco, Naylor, and Rodríguez) are all guys who can make pitchers pay for a mistake fastball. Raleigh and Rodríguez often go big-game hunting, while Polanco and Naylor are more balanced with fewer holes in their approach. Meanwhile, the guys who have taken more of a backseat this series (Randy Arozarena, Eugenio Suárez, Dominic Canzone) crush secondaries in the zone. If Bieber hangs a slider to any of those hitters, it's likely ending up in the seats. In sum, this is a group that will require Bieber to stay on his toes and change his strategy with every hitter. Their combination of power guys, contact guys, steep swings, flat swings, fastball mashers, and off-speed/breaking-ball hunters is a tall task for any opponent. If Shane Bieber can rediscover his changeup, refine his fastball location compared to his last outing, and even mix in a few cutters to throw off the middle of the order, he should give the Jays a decent shot at getting themselves back in this series. View full article

With Sunday's victory in Kansas City, the Blue Jays snapped a four-game losing streak and officially clinched a postseason spot. It has been an impressive year that fans shouldn't take for granted; just a season after winning 74 games and finishing last in the AL East, their 90-66 record is the best in the Junior Circuit. They'll have the division title and a first-round bye by the end of the week if they can simply tread water. While these are all huge developments for the franchise and should be celebrated, even the short-term future is difficult to size up. The Blue Jays have been greater than the sum of their parts, which is a necessary trait for a winning team, but there isn't a ton of proven, elite-level talent here. They may have 90 wins, but their run differential suggests that total should be lower. For most of the year, they've been a joy to watch, but they've done so despite showing many indicators of being a fortunate ball club. Of course, it's now 2025, a time when run differential is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our ability to quantify the impact of luck and determine how sustainable team performance is. Let's see what else we can find. Pythagorean win-loss record is, at this point, a fairly mainstream smell test that's used to determine the legitimacy of a team's actual win-loss record. It uses runs scored and runs allowed to determine what we'd expect a team's record to be. At the time of writing, the Blue Jays' record of 90-66 outpaces their Pythagorean record of 84-72 by six wins. The only team with a greater difference between the two is the Cleveland Guardians, who sit seven wins above their Pythagorean total. This is the kind of thing that can even out in no time flat. Remember 2016, when the Wild Card-winning Blue Jays swept the top-seed Rangers out of the ALDS? That wasn't as much of an upset as the bracket would show. Texas went 95-67 that year, but their Pyth. record was 82-80, the biggest difference (+13) in MLB history at the time (the 2021 Mariners finished 14 wins above). On the other hand, this could also be some sort of extremely long balancing act by the baseball gods. Remember 2021, when the Blue Jays went on a second-half heater to win 91 games but missed the playoffs because of how good their division was? Their Pyth. record was 99-63, suggesting they should've been playoff-bound. We can go deeper with this, though. FanGraphs has a modernized version of Pythagorean record called PythagenPat, which is more accurately sensitive to changes in run-scoring environment. That method expects the Blue Jays to be an 85-71 club at this point – one win better than the original formula says, but still short of the Yankees' and Red Sox's expected totals. Also available at FanGraphs is BaseRuns, a formula that uses expected runs for/against instead of actual by approximating those numbers using figures such as hits, walks, home runs, and sacrifices, and determining expected win totals from there. You could argue that actual run totals are noisy enough that BaseRuns is the most advanced theory in this realm of discussion, but it's also the tool that's least convinced by what the Blue Jays have done this season. Their BaseRuns record is 83-73, seven wins below reality. Of course, none of this is to discourage belief in this team. At worst, they're deserving of a win total between 83 and 85 at the moment. That's still worthy of far more respect than they got going into the season, and it's a marked improvement over last year regardless. What it does illuminate is how thin the margins are, especially going into this final week. If any of these three record estimators were perfectly reflected in reality, the Blue Jays would be either the fifth or sixth seed in the AL instead of being in pole position. Personally, what worries me the most about this team's chances in October is the lack of star power atop the rotation. Acquiring Shane Bieber at the deadline solved that to an extent, and Kevin Gausman has had a monster second half, but the fact that they're doing this without a clear ace feels fishy. A number one starter isn't necessarily an essential ingredient for winning a championship, but go back and look at all the World Series winners so far this decade. The only one with a below-average regular season rotation was last year's Dodgers, but they had a lockdown bullpen and more than enough offense to get the job done. Toronto's starters rank 20th in ERA and 24th in fWAR this year, and in a short series against tough competition, that could get exposed. If everything you've read to this point is an argument that the Blue Jays will struggle in the playoffs and that they aren't truly qualified to receive a Wild Card bye, then consider the rest an argument to the opposite. Toronto is once again leading MLB in Statcast's fielding run value, and despite some midseason lapses, they're a contender to win another Gold Glove Team Award this year. When there aren't All-Stars up and down the lineup or rotation, the standard for the defense is higher, and the Jays continue to show up in the field. That's part of why their position player fWAR total is second in the big leagues, behind only the Yankees. Conventional baseball wisdom suggests a team worth 0.0 WAR would finish with around 48 wins, and the Blue Jays' total fWAR, including the pitching staff, is 42.0. According to WAR, their 90 wins are no fluke at all. Another reason as to why their position players have accrued so much WAR is their offense, which isn't flashy, but has proven both effective and deep. Their 112 wRC+ is fifth in MLB. They hit the ball hard, and while they don't hit it in the air that much, aren't especially disciplined, and aren't actionable on the basepaths, they make a ton of contact. Not only have they struck out less than any other team in baseball this year, they're on track for the third-lowest era-and-park-adjusted K% of any team in the past 25 years. This is the approach that those 2014 and 2015 pennant-winning Royals teams swore by: Put the ball in play, hit line drives, and keep the pitcher on his toes at all times. We shouldn't disregard, however, the fact that the offense is also top-five by xwOBA. Further, their xwOBA is 10 points higher than their wOBA – it's not like they've been riding batted ball luck to victory the whole way. On top of all that...they beat good teams! Toronto's record of 47-40 against teams with a .500 record or better is tied with the Mariners for best in the AL. Their division is a gauntlet every year and has given them fits recently, but they've turned that around in 2025 as well. Only the Red Sox have a better head-to-head record against AL East competition. In order to maintain good standing in the division and the playoff picture, it's imperative to defeat both top rivals and good teams in general as much as possible, and this year's Blue Jays have done that and then some. They're a confounding team in so many ways. My expectations going into the year were shattered, which I'm sure is the case for many others. On paper, they aren't as menacing as the recent playoff teams in franchise history, but they win close games, they beat good teams, they frequently come back in the late innings, and they show the kind of fight that makes the fanbase proud. Can that all be taken at face value? Ultimately, I wholeheartedly believe the Toronto Blue Jays deserve the playoff spot they just clinched, but some form of luck is responsible for them being a first-place team hoping to secure a bye instead of a Wild Card team hoping to win the sprint to reach the playoffs. While the thought of a bye is certainly tempting, it will hardly matter when the ALDS gets underway in a week and a half. This is why they play the games. They got in, and they earned this opportunity. This year's team hasn't let many of those go to waste. All figures entering play on September 22, 2025. View full article