Matthew Creally

Welcome back to Blue Jays Clutch Plays, a recurring post that highlights the six most pivotal plays (three pitching, three hitting) from the past week of Blue Jays baseball, according to MLB's win probability model. Click here to read last week's edition. There are still 153 games left, and most of the AL East has fallen on hard times as well, but it felt like a cursed week for the Blue Jays. After putting themselves in a good position to pounce on the soft early portion of the schedule by sweeping the Athletics, they followed it up by dropping two of three to the Rockies and getting swept by the Chicago White Sox. They scored three runs per game across the two series. Cody Ponce and Alejandro Kirk were placed on the IL, Brendon Little was optioned to Triple A, and Addison Barger was removed from Sunday's game after injuring himself trying to leg out an infield hit. They head into a World Series rematch with the Dodgers at 4-5. Here are some of the lone bright spots from the past week. Pitching 3. Tyler Rogers: Miguel Vargas Force Out, Bot 9, 4/3 (+11.4% WPA) With the winning run on base in the bottom of the ninth during Friday's opener in Chicago, Tyler Rogers elected to intentionally walk the slugging Munetaka Murakami and take his chances with Miguel Vargas instead. It ended up being a wise move, as he got a second-pitch groundout to third. All Kazuma Okamoto had to do was step on the bag to send the game to extras. 2. Mason Fluharty: Ezequiel Tovar Strikeout, Top 8, 4/1 (+14.3% WPA) After the Rockies scored the tying run in the eighth against Tommy Nance, Mason Fluharty was in a tough spot with the go-ahead run 90 feet away and just one out. He got Ezequiel Tovar here on three pitches and struck out Ryan Ritter immediately after, walking the tightrope out of danger for the Blue Jays to keep the rubber match of the series tied and send it to the bottom of the eighth. 1. Jeff Hoffman: Austin Hays Strikeout, Top 10, 4/3 (+25.5% WPA) Lost in the painful ending to Friday afternoon's game was this slider that Jeff Hoffman curled just below the inside corner to strike out Austin Hays with the tying run on third. It put the Blue Jays on the doorstep of a come-from-behind win that would've spoiled the belated opening day festivities at Rate Field. Their win probability was 83.1% immediately after this pitch, but the White Sox were victorious just two batters later. Hitting 3. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: 2-run HR, Top 6, 4/4 (+26.0% WPA) It's a shame how short-lived this was. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had yet to tap into his power much at all this year until Saturday. He struck out in the first and flew out to the left field wall in the fourth. He got another pitch on the inner half of the zone in the sixth and didn't miss it, launching his first home run and flipping the scoreboard in the process. The ball travelled 437 feet after jumping off his bat at 108.5 mph, a homer in all 30 parks. 2. George Springer: Reached on Error, Top 10, 4/3 (+28.2% WPA) Ernie Clement led off the 10th on Friday by moving the extra-innings runner, Davis Schneider, over to third on a groundout for George Springer. He didn't quite execute that situation the way he wanted, but a double-clutch at third base proved costly for Miguel Vargas, who took Murakami off the bag with his throw to first. Springer was safe after review, and Schneider scored, giving the Blue Jays the lead. 1. Andrés Giménez: 2-run HR, Top 8, 4/3 (+29.3% WPA) Andrés Giménez has delivered when the Blue Jays have needed him on multiple occasions already in the young season. This towering drive off the right field foul pole tied things up at three on Friday afternoon. Giménez ambushed Jordan Leasure, one of the better arms in the White Sox bullpen, on the first pitch after Leasure failed to elevate a 95-mph fastball. Chicago's win probability was 79% even after Ernie Clement's leadoff single right before this home run, which reset the odds to 50/50, enough to make it the most clutch play of the week. View full article

Welcome to Shape of the Blue Jays, my column where I dig into Statcast numbers to analyze recent pitch shape and swing shape trends for Toronto Blue Jays players and discuss how they have impacted their performance. Quick Hits: Offense The momentum from a season-opening sweep of the A's ground to a halt on Wednesday. Toronto's offense let plenty of run-scoring opportunities go by in the rubber match against the Rockies, dropping the series to finish their first homestand with a 4-2 record. Two things can be true about this: Yes, failing to cash in against weaker pitching during what's probably going to be the softest part of their schedule all year is not ideal. The Blue Jays scored 45 runs in three games against Colorado last August when they were in mid-season form, and nothing about their at-bats this week suggests they're in midseason form yet. They aren't the only ones struggling, though. The 1-5 Red Sox are averaging less than three runs a game. The 3-3 Mets just scored three runs in as many games in St. Louis. The Dodgers are coming off a series loss to the Guardians at home in which they scored just seven total runs. It's a small sample, but three true outcomes – strikeouts, walks, and home runs – are up across the league, and it may not feel like it after Wednesday's loss, but the Jays still rank top 10 in the league in K%, BB%, and wRC+. The Rockies series wasn't one to be proud of, but this is life over 162. Dylan Cease It's tough to ask for a much better introduction than the one Dylan Cease graced us with on Saturday (5.1 IP, 1 ER, 3 H, 12 K, 2 BB). The fact that he expanded his arsenal throughout the gem has been well-documented. Another thing that stood out to me was a change in his fastball shape. It had more induced vertical break and cutting action, as well as a velocity gain of nearly 2 mph, compared to 2025. He isn't someone who has historically lost velocity as the season goes on either. The result? Four strikeouts with the four-seamer alone, despite him using the slider way more in two-strike counts. Dylan Cease Four-Seam Fastball Specs, 2025 vs. 2026 Year MPH iVB Arm-side HB RPM 2025 97.1 18.5" 3.7" 2,550 2026 98.7 19.7" 2.3" 2,565 The reasons for this are probably weirder than you think. Fans may have noticed a quirk about Cease's delivery: Whenever he was mid-windup during that start against the Athletics, he wasn't looking at the target. In fact, he was gazing off to the third-base side right before release. It sounds crazy, but he learned during spring training that actively looking away from the plate during the early part of his motion added carry to his fastball. Whatever works! Dylan Cease's unconventional windup. Note the direction he's facing. Max Scherzer Is Max Scherzer unable to quit pitching, or is pitching unable to quit him? The future Hall of Famer didn't miss a beat in his first outing despite a slightly abbreviated spring training (6.0 IP, 1 ER, 4 H, 4 K, 1 BB). Nothing was considerably different about his release or usage compared to last year, but like Cease, he flashed a slightly improved four-seam fastball shape. It's virtually identical in terms of velocity, but it averaged 17.4" of iVB on Tuesday, compared to 16.2" last year. PitchingBot, one of two pitch quality models on FanGraphs, still considers Scherzer's fastball an above-average offering. Not many pitchers who have stayed in the show past 40 can claim their fastball declined this gracefully in the latter half of their careers. With Cody Ponce's injury, there's a lot being asked of Scherzer at the moment. He's currently on a schedule that lines up his next three starts as follows: vs. LAD, vs. MIN, @ ARI. For better or worse, he's going to have to eat key innings this month, and in the starts against the Dodgers and Diamondbacks, that might be a tall task. He is not a groundball pitcher, and those are two offenses full of hitters who can hit the ball hard and in the air. There are some games ahead that will be pivotal in determining how the Blue Jays respond to the adversity of having four starters on the IL, and Scherzer will be in the middle of it all. Jesús Sánchez Jesús Sánchez is scorching to start his Blue Jays tenure (.375/.500/.563, 1 HR, 2 K, 2 BB, 20 PA). Mitch Bannon of The Athletic put out a great piece on Thursday morning detailing the changes he has made since getting traded to Toronto. The general sentiment among the coaching staff seems to be that he got away from his true self after being flipped from Miami to Houston at the deadline last year, leading to a prolonged slump down the stretch. The Blue Jays are trying to tell Sanchez to lean into his identity and play to his strengths, rather than cover his weaknesses. Jesús Sánchez bat speed distribution, 2023-2026 (Statcast). What's interesting about the bat speed distribution chart above, though, is that Sánchez, known for his thunderous swing, has been more reserved so far in 2026. The top-end bat speed is still there, but he's choosing to swing slower in way more spots. Breaking it down by count reveals that he's swinging way slower on secondary pitches with two strikes, an early indication that he's developing a more polished approach from behind in the count. Considering he has only struck out twice, it's working. The fact that Sánchez got a start against southpaw Kyle Freeland on Wednesday (while Addison Barger did not), despite Sánchez's career 42 wRC+ vs. LHP, speaks to the trust the Jays have in the newest addition to their offense. It's not exactly unwarranted either. Barger has chased 47.5% of the pitches he has seen outside the zone so far, an astronomical rate that has contributed to his 0-for-13 start. After being asked why he kept Barger out of the lineup Tuesday against a righty, manager John Schneider simply said "Slow down, Addie," according to Toronto's play-by-play team on Sportsnet. Until he does, it seems Sánchez will get every opportunity to keep building. All visuals and figures courtesy of Baseball Savant and FanGraphs, effective April 2, 2026. View full article

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Blue Jays Clutch Plays, a recurring post that highlights the six most pivotal plays (three pitching, three hitting) from the past week of Blue Jays baseball, according to MLB's win probability model. Last year's Blue Jays taught us that a slow start to the season isn't the end of the world. Then again, it doesn't hurt to get ahead. Headlined by consecutive nail-biter walk-off wins and punctuated with a record-setting day for the pitching staff on Sunday, the Jays completed a sweep of the Athletics to begin the year 3-0 for the first time since 1996. Their pitchers struck out 50 batters over the course of the series, a modern-era record to start a season. Not a bad way to kick off their 50th anniversary! Pitching 3. Louis Varland: Jacob Wilson GIDP, Top 7, 3/27 (+17.5% wPA) Varland picked up right where he left off in 2025 by pitching in a high-leverage spot. With the tying and go-ahead runs on and nobody out, he struck out Brent Rooker before inducing a perfectly-timed groundball from Jacob Wilson, hit right at second baseman Ernie Clement. The rest was academic. 2. Braydon Fisher: Jacob Wilson GIDP, Top 6, 3/28 (+17.7% wPA) It was a tough weekend for Wilson. Known for his contact skills, he struck out five times in 13 plate appearances, and even when he did put bat on ball, it didn't always end well. After a hard-luck start to the inning that saw the A's finally score on Dylan Cease after his masterful debut, Braydon Fisher came on and got another grounder from the not-Oakland shortstop. It wasn't the easiest double play in the world, but Toronto's dazzling middle infield combination of Giménez and Clement made it happen. 1. Louis Varland: Soderstrom GIDP Top 10 3/28 (+24.1% wPA) It's unfortunate for Varland that Brent Rooker drove in a run immediately after this because as it happened, it looked like the table would be set for the Jays to win it in the 10th. Ultimately, they only had to wait one more inning. After walking the white-hot Shea Langeliers to take away the open base with the ghost runner on in extra innings, Varland got a tailor-made groundball from Soderstrom for an easy 4-6-3. Hitting 3. Ernie Clement: Walk-off single, Bot 11, 3/28 (+29.0% wPA) The final act of Saturday afternoon's thrilling comeback victory came courtesy of Clement, who worked the count full against Luis Medina before turning on a 99-mph fastball and drilling it into the left-center gap. Pinch-runner Nathan Lukes scored the winning run from second with ease to cap off an eventful game that once saw the Jays trailing 6-2 heading to the bottom of the seventh before flipping the script to win 8-7 in extras. 2. Andrés Giménez: Walk-off single, Bot 9, 3/27 (+36.6% wPA) Andrés Giménez was one of many unlikely heroes in last year's playoff run after a lost season at the plate. To say he started off on the right foot in 2026 would be an understatement, as the opening night theatrics would not have come close to happening without him; he drove in all three runs during the 3-2 win. What began as a bases-empty, two-out scenario turned into a masterclass by the bottom of the order: Kazuma Okamoto singled to right, Ernie Clement chopped a double over third baseman Max Muncy's head, and then Giménez finished the job with a hard grounder back up the middle. Maybe being a world champion does make you feel different! 1. Alejandro Kirk: Solo HR, Bot 9, 3/28 (+46.7% wPA) The Blue Jays' first home run of the season could not have come at a better time. Mere seconds after Okamoto let an arguably challengeable pitch go by for strike three, Kirk shocked the Rogers Centre with a no-doubter to left field off A's reliever Michael Kelly to tie it at six with one out in the bottom of the ninth. Toronto's catcher, known for his flat swing, normally likes the ball high in the zone, but it was a sweeper middle-down that he deposited into the seats above the home bullpen. Fun fact: For how often the Jays found a way to win in 2025, this would've been their sixth-most clutch play of the last regular season. It was the most dramatic of swings in a game that saw a whopping six plays that caused at least a 20% swing in win probability. Up next for the Blue Jays: A home series against the Rockies to start the week before three games in Chicago for the White Sox home opener on the weekend. View full article

Pitching is an art and a science, but even more so, it's a game of adjustments. Getting ahead and staying ahead of hitters requires constant self-awareness from pitchers with respect to their strategy and plan of attack. Tinkering with one's arsenal can permanently alter the course of one's career for the better, like it did, for example, when former Blue Jay R.A. Dickey picked up a knuckleball in the 2000s. More often than that, learning to throw different pitch types can be just the subtle change pitchers need to stay competitive: Sweepers, cutters, and kick changeups became trendy for a reason. With a month of spring training games having come and gone, here is a profile on every new pitch of note that we saw down in Dunedin in 2026, and how it affects the outlook of those that deployed them. Dylan Cease: Changeup It took until his final preseason start on Sunday, but we finally saw the changeup that Dylan Cease has wanted to add to his arsenal for a long time. According to Statcast, he threw 11 of them on Sunday in the Blue Jays' 14-1 drubbing of Tampa Bay, and it returned a 57% swing-and-miss rate to help him cap off a spring training that saw him record a 0.93 ERA, 30.8% K rate, and a 7.7% BB rate in 9.2 IP. Think he's ready to go? Assuming Cease is comfortable enough to take this pitch with him into the regular season right away, it won't be your conventional changeup. It has the vertical carry of a fastball (17.7" iVB) but averaged 87 MPH, a velocity he'll no doubt be happy with, considering every other attempt he has made at a changeup at the MLB level has been around 20 MPH slower than his four-seamer; too big of a gap to fool anyone. It averaged ~9" of arm-side movement, which, again, isn't notable for a changeup but notably separates from the cutting action on his fastball. Another good sign from Sunday was his ability to command it: 8 of his 11 changeups landed in the strike zone, a promising development for a starter who has been plagued by location issues before. As expected, we've seen Cease divert away from the fastball-slider combo that was nearly exclusive for parts of 2025. His combined usage of those two pitches was just 62% this spring, down from 83% last year. The knuckle curve he began toying with in his final starts with the Padres is now a clear tertiary pitch for him against left-handed batters, and against righties, he was throwing a lot more sinkers and sweepers, relying on the four-seamer much less. Cease has always had strong peripherals because the specs on his hard fastball and bullet slider are excellent in a vacuum and allow him to miss plenty of bats. To this point, he has had trouble living up to them because of the lack of diversity in his arsenal. This spring was the least predictable Cease has been since his early days in Chicago. His much-anticipated regular season debut will come Saturday vs the A's. Dylan Cease Usage Splits, 2025 by Half vs. Spring Training (Statcast) Pitch Type First Half 2025 Second Half 2025 2026 ST FF 41.0% 43.4% 31.8% SL 47.2% 33.8% 31.2% Others 11.8% 22.8% 37.0% Brendon Little: Slider, Four-Seam Fastball The Blue Jays bullpen's lefty workhorse has long had the kind of stuff that perplexes batters, but he tapered off in a bad way to end 2025 after losing the strike zone and running out of gas in general. Even if a reliever has two distinct offerings with plus-plus bat-missing potential, it becomes compromised when hitters know he can't consistently throw them for strikes and doesn't have another weapon to turn to. Naturally, then, Little showed up to camp with a repertoire that effectively doubled in size: He'll still be the sinker-curveball guy we've come to know, but he now boasts a gyro slider and a traditional four-seamer as well. Many instances of a pitcher adding to their arsenal happen because the pitcher is looking to address a specific platoon matchup, often opposite-handed hitters. This is not the case with Little; in fact, his approach against lefty hitters changed more drastically this spring than his strategy against righties. Specifically, he used his new slider almost in perfect tandem with his sinker against same-handed opponents, essentially removing the curveball from the picture entirely. It's already obvious that stuff models are going to love this pitch: It sat 90-91 MPH with plenty of spin and true bullet action. That's not far off from the specs of Tarik Skubal's slider for the sake of comparison. As we know, though, it would be premature to mention anything else about those two sliders in the same breath unless Little can throw it for strikes. Against lefties, it had a 33% zone rate, which is around the same as his knuckle curve was last year. However, he also used it sparingly against righties, a situation where he was able to find the zone more (50%). Overall, it generated a 73% (!!!) swing and miss rate this spring. Intriguing, to say the least. Brendon Little Usage vs. LHB, 2025 vs. Spring Training (Statcast) Pitch Type 2025 2026 ST Sinker 52.8% 40.5% Knuckle Curve 41.9% 9.5% Slider - 35.7% Four-Seam Fastball - 14.3% Cutter 5.3% - The four-seamer was, along with the slider, a tertiary weapon against righties but also saw some occasional left-on-left usage. Even after considering its lower arm slot, its movement patterns won't be surprising for hitters (13.4" iVB, 6.8" arm-side), but it did average 97 MPH and touched 98 during game action. If this pitch ends up being successful, it won't be on account of its raw traits. There's nothing too special about an upper-90s fastball with dead zone movement in today's MLB. What it does have is big-time trajectory separation from his sinker, and it will also force hitters to think about the upper half of the strike zone when Little is on the mound. Having a nasty sinker, curveball, and slider is great, but it also tells the hitter he's about to see a lot of pitches down, which doesn't leave much to have to guess on. If Little uses this fastball occasionally and can steal a strike to keep opponents off balance, it will make the rest of his arsenal play up. Mason Fluharty: Changeup Much like Brendon Little, Fluharty is a lefty reliever and a recent graduate from the Jays' prospect ranks with a 2-pitch arsenal (lacking a traditional four-seam fastball) and impressive stuff but less impressive command. He could throw strikes more frequently than Little by the end of the season, so he was squarely within the circle of trust by the time the World Series rolled around, but his cutter-sweeper repertoire lacks diversity. It's pretty rare for any MLB reliever to not have a pitch that moves arm-side, and while Fluharty was a unicorn that way in 2025, he flashed a changeup for the first time during camp this year. Initially classified as a sinker by Statcast, Fluharty's changeup sat at 88 MPH with ~5" of iVB and ~11" of run and became his new secondary against righties. He threw his cutter 67% of the time in that situation last year, but the changeup gives him another path to go down early in counts and forces hitters to stay on top of both sides of the plate. The movement and spin characteristics of this pitch compare pretty closely to the changeup that now-AL East rival Ryan Weathers threw when he was with the Marlins in 2025, which generated a swing and miss rate over 40%, an xwOBA under .300, and got above-average grades from both Stuff+ and PitchingBot's stuff model on Fangraphs. Mason Fluharty (2026) vs. Ryan Weathers (2025) changeup specs comparison (Statcast) Pitcher MPH iVB Arm-side HB RPM Mason Fluharty 87.3 4.9" 11.1" 1,980 Ryan Weathers 88.2 2.7" 12.5" 1,862 It should be noted that only five of the 15 changeups Fluharty threw this spring were in the zone (33%), but it got a 40% chase rate in a small sample, so hitters, at least for now, haven't figured out how to handle it. It was responsible for the lone preseason extra base hit he gave up, but on balls in play, it had the lowest exit velocity of the 3 pitches in his arsenal, and generating weak contact was already something he was great at in 2025. Louis Varland: Changeup Varland throwing changeups is not a completely new development. He leaned on it more down the stretch after getting traded to Toronto at the deadline, and by the postseason, it was a clear tertiary pitch behind that lethal fastball-curveball combo. This year, though, he has made significant adjustments to its shape: It now profiles more like a kick change, with more downward movement and less spin than the 2025 iteration. Louis Varland Changeup Specs, 2025 vs. Spring Training (Statcast) Category 2025 2026 ST MPH 91.8 91.8 iVB 4.7" 1.5" Arm-side HB 14.1" 12.2" RPM 1,741 1,563 Unsurprisingly, lefties saw their fair share of these new-and-improved changeups from Varland over the course of the spring. While it was delightful seeing him unleash adrenaline-fueled mid-90s changeups in the postseason, this newer variant got outstanding preseason results (50% swing and miss, .233 wOBA, -20° launch angle). From a usage perspective, he won't look all that different from the end of 2025, nor does he have to: Varland already has excellent stuff that he can throw for strikes, and refining one of his secondaries to give him another viable strikeout pitch in weak side matchups is a low-risk, high-reward maneuver. Braydon Fisher: Cutter At the very start of camp, The Athletic's Mitch Bannon reported that Braydon Fisher was looking to add a cutter in response to the lack of chase his curveball got from lefties as the season went on. While this would've been an interesting development, the jury is out on whether it will actually come to fruition in the regular season because he threw just 3 cutters out of the 110 total pitches he threw in the spring. Of course, this isn't to say Fisher is the same guy he was at the end of 2025. He's pushed his fastball usage against lefties by quite a bit, using it and the slider at a combined rate of over 70% in those matchups, a stark contrast to last year when he used the curveball 50% of the time. Competition for bullpen reps will be steep early in the season in Toronto, but Fisher is doing his part to ensure that last year was no mirage. View full article

The natural state of a major league bullpen features a lot of in-season personnel turnover thanks to injuries, matchup planning for a given series, and the relative expendability of pitchers who fill a short-inning role. Thanks to the Blue Jays' ample starting pitching depth, as well as the fact that they have multiple Rule 5 draft picks (Angel Bastardo and Spencer Miles) fighting to break camp in the bullpen, Braydon Fisher is on the bubble to start the regular season in Toronto. He has three minor league options remaining and pitched mostly in low-leverage spots by the time the postseason rolled around in 2025. Yes, there were multiple proven closers on the free agent market after a year in which Rogers reaped the financial benefits of a World Series run. Yes, the Blue Jays signed none of them, but this will still be the strongest bullpen they've had to start a season in quite some time. Behind Jeff Hoffman, John Schneider will have Tyler Rogers, Louis Varland, and a new-and-improved Brendon Little at his disposal in the late innings. The dependability of Rogers and a full season of Varland are especially encouraging additions, considering the bullpen the Jays entered 2025 with. Fisher's current status, then, is far more a testament to the group around him than his own shortcomings. I frankly don't know how many other teams would even have to question whether Fisher would make their Opening Day roster. In exactly 50 innings in 2025, he did more things really well than you might realize. He was part of a group of just 32 pitchers (of the 339 that threw at least 50 innings) that had a strikeout rate above 30% and an average exit velocity below 90 mph. It's how he got those results, though, that stands out. You see, Fisher's arsenal features an almost exclusive slider-curveball dependence. Only Atlanta's Tyler Kinley threw a higher percentage of breaking balls in 2025. Fisher's fastball has decent velocity at 95-96 mph, but its movement patterns (high-carry, cutting action) are pretty much exactly in line with what you'd expect given his arm angle and propensity for spinning the ball. So, he just doesn't throw it very often. He's extremely curveball-heavy to lefties and slider-heavy to righties, and it has worked out for him so far. MLB Breaking Ball Usage% Leaders, 2025 Rank Pitcher Breaking Ball Usage% 1 Tyler Kinley 75.4% 2 Braydon Fisher 74.4% 3 Pierce Johnson 71.3% 4 Anthony Bender 67.5% 5 Tristan Beck 67.0% min. 500 pitches; source: Statcast Together, his 12-6 curveball and bullet slider frequently vexed opposing hitters. A ~75th-percentile average exit velocity against doesn't do Fisher's quality contact suppression skills justice; pitchers have little influence over that anyway. His overall groundball rate was only 36.4% in 2025, well below-average, but at the pitch type level, we can see there was an element of strategy to that. His curveball was actually quite efficient at generating grounders, while his slider (along with his four-seamer, when he used it) was a popup machine. His overall popup rate for the season was 11%. That's elite territory. A fairly large proportion of total contact against Fisher's two primary pitches is essentially guaranteed to be harmless. Fisher's GB% and PU% by Pitch Type, 2025 Batted Ball Type Curveball Slider GB% 56.8% 36.7% PU% 0.0% 16.3% Source: Statcast There aren't many pitchers who can morph from a groundball arm against one handedness to a popup inducer against the other. Depending on who's at the plate, his plan of attack in terms of missing barrels could be completely different from the at-bat before, but he still gets weak contact – and misses bats – in either scenario. This feels like a good time to remind everyone that Fisher was the lone piece of the return package when the Blue Jays traded Cavan Biggio to the Dodgers in 2024. At the time of the trade, Fisher had all of 11.2 innings above Double A to his name, and some pretty severe walk issues plagued him throughout the minors. The results didn't immediately get better in Buffalo either, but he made one key change to his approach: getting a head start. Fisher's Command Indicators, Triple-A, 2024 Organization First-Pitch Strike% Zone% LAD 49.1% 48.5% TOR 58.7% 50.7% Source: Statcast through FanGraphs Sometimes, throwing strike one more often really does allow everything else to fall into place. When Fisher started 2025 in Buffalo, that first-pitch strike rate climbed to 55%. In the big leagues, it sat just a hair under 60%. This is a guy who walked between 13% and 18% of batters he faced at essentially every step of the minors, and out of nowhere in 2025, he learned to throw strikes with consistency. The pitch models back that up as well, as his location was given perfectly average grades by both Cameron Grove's PitchingBot and Eno Sarris's Stuff+ model. As a former fourth-round pick out of high school in 2018, the stuff was never a big question. Whatever the Jays did to fix his command has proved consequential, to say the least. There were occasions in 2025 when Fisher was thrown into the fire out of necessity. In hindsight, his two-inning, four-strikeout masterclass at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa to seal a 2-1 win for the Blue Jays in 11 innings on September 15 stands out as one of the team's most pivotal moments on their way to an AL East title. In fact, his strikeout of Junior Caminero to end that game was the second-most important strikeout by a Jays pitcher all regular season, according to Statcast win probability, behind only Mason Fluharty's famous ambush of Shohei Ohtani in August. That night in Tampa accounts for a large percentage of Fisher's total high-leverage work as a big leaguer (only 8.1 innings, beware of small sample size), but he does have a 1.22 FIP and a 2.88 xFIP in those spots. He has been up to the task when he has been needed most. And yet, with the Blue Jays exhausting every possible option as they look to bring that elusive championship home in 2026, it's far from a lock that he'll be in the building to face the Athletics on March 27. It won't be Fisher's fault if he doesn't make the cut. Things have gone mostly according to plan so far this spring through the first 16 batters he's faced (as of March 10): Fisher's Key Indicators, 2025 vs. 2026 Spring Training Stat 2025 2026 ST CSW% 33.9% 29.0% Zone Miss% 14.6% 25.0% Chase% 28.9% 24.2% Zone% 49.9% 52.2% Source: FanGraphs It sounds crazy at first that a 25-year-old reliever who misses bats, generates weak contact of all kinds, and excelled in his first taste of high-leverage action for a pennant-winning team might not make the cut next spring, but in their treatment of Braydon Fisher so far, the Blue Jays have exemplified the ways in which they've improved their player management over the past couple of years: They took a flier on a high-ceiling relief prospect hoping to find a silver lining after one of their most tenured hitters didn't pan out, oversaw significant improvements to his command and projectability, gave him the big league run time he had earned, and still amassed contingency plan after contingency plan for the bullpen following his first season. Fisher's flexibility with respect to his minor league options makes him a wholly undeserving candidate to be the odd man out on Opening Day, but again, that's just how the modern bullpen works. He showed more than enough in 2025 to convince the organization that he could be a key part of their relief corps for the immediate future, and if breaking camp isn't in the cards, he will surely arrive at the first sign of injury or underperformance. A young pitcher with plus stuff and damage suppression skills can't be held down for long. View full article

Rejoice! There's live baseball for us to (over)react to again, and with the first week of spring training games nearly complete, I've compiled some tidbits on what we've seen from various Blue Jays so far. At this time of year, the results are of little interest to the coaching staff and front office, so the focus shouldn't be on box scores as much as key indicators of underlying process. While the Opening Day roster is far from a sure thing, there are those with a virtually guaranteed role on this club. Spring training, especially the start, is a time more urgent for those on the bubble, including top prospects looking to make an impression. The content below will focus largely on some of the newest Blue Jays, as well as those whose initial assignment for 2026 is currently in flux. Most importantly: It's still early days. Beware of the small sample size before jumping to any conclusions about the players below. There's still plenty of preseason to go! Cody Ponce Cody Ponce's first outing of the spring went swimmingly, as he retired Parker Meadows, Kevin McGonigle, and Jahmai Jones in order in his only inning of work on Wednesday against the Tigers. The biggest story of the day was his four-seam fastball, which translated better than originally anticipated from a shape perspective. It sat 96 MPH with 17" of carry and 9" of arm-side movement, so he relied on it heavily (42% usage). More notes on Ponce: We also saw a healthy dose of his kick changeup (89 MPH, 5" IVB, 8" arm-side, 40% zone), which was responsible for one of Ponce's two strikeouts, as well as his cutter (92 MPH, 11" IVB, 1" arm-side, 20% zone). Around the big leagues, the cutter is often an early-count weapon to steal a strike, especially for those who have another fastball they throw more often. Ponce, however, was keen to turn to it with two strikes, which I think partially explains the low zone rate. He only threw two breaking balls that afternoon, unsurprising since he faced only one righty batter. 12" of separation in vertical movement between the four-seamer and the changeup is a great sign early on. Being able to space those two pitch types out in space is key to generating swing-and-miss on both. That difference would've placed in the ~70th percentile MLB last year, similar to Drew Rasmussen, Michael King, and Aaron Nola. When those guys are right, they boast some of the best fastball-changeup combos in the game. José Berríos José Berríos was one of the first regulars from last year's pitching staff to get a start. Concerningly, the velocity on his four-seam and his sinker sat in the 91-92 MPH range, down a full tick from last year's average, and he was only in the zone 42.5% of the time. In fairness to Berríos, it was an unseasonably cold afternoon in Dunedin during his start, and it's generally unrealistic to expect every pitcher to be up to speed this early on. More notes on Berríos: Interestingly, the vertical carry on both his fastballs was up considerably compared to last year. Maybe that'll be his MO to make sure they still play at the big league level despite lacking velocity? He was also toying with his release point. His vertical release point was higher, while his horizontal release point was closer to third base, which shouldn't change his arm angle too much from the 39° it was last year, but it'll be a different look than the one hitters have gotten used to recently. An Eric Lauer trade would improve Berríos's outlook for the coming year, but the Max Scherzer signing adds another name to the starting pitcher carousel. There is much left yet to prove for Berríos this spring. Eloy Jiménez Eloy Jiménez is proving his stellar season in the Dominican Winter League was no joke. He's 3-for-5 with a homer so far, and the early returns have sparked a modest debate as to whether he could crack the Opening Day roster. If that happens, it'll likely come at the expense of either Davis Schneider or Nathan Lukes, as the Jays would be carrying two DH-only types in Jiménez and George Springer, further necessitating the need for Myles Straw as defensive depth. Of course, we're a long way from that actually coming to pass, but his average exit velocity is 98 MPH, and two of his three batted balls so far have been barrels. He has yet to swing and miss on a pitch in the zone, and his chase rate is a manageable 30%. Yariel Rodríguez Yariel Rodríguez was somewhat surprisingly designated for assignment earlier in the offseason as the Blue Jays polished their bullpen, but it was made clear at the time that he'd get a shot to win his job back in spring training. His first crack didn't go well, as he imploded in the middle innings against the Red Sox on Sunday. His fastball velocity was down nearly 3 MPH from last year; again, not entirely unexpected at this time of year, but he was only in the zone with it 29% of the time, inducing seven swings on just 26 pitches. With Angel Bastardo and Spencer Miles holding the upper hand as Rule 5 draft picks, the chances of Rodríguez getting reinstated to the 40-man and added to the MLB bullpen out of the gate appear slim to none at this point, even with the news that Yimi García won't be ready to start the regular season. Position Player Prospects of Interest SS/3B Josh Kasevich is 3-for-6 with a homer. He has missed on just one of his 13 swings and recorded three hard hits (two barrels) on six batted balls. OF RJ Schreck is 2-for-6 with just one miss on nine swings. He has struck out three times but does have four hard hits (two barrels) and is elevating frequently with an average launch angle of 22°. LF/RF Yohendrick Pinango is 1-for-6 with two walks. His 76.2% contact rate doesn't jump off the page, but two of his three batted balls were hard-hit, and his average launch angle is 23°. Pitching Prospects of Interest Left-handed RP Adam Macko has been leaning a ton on his four-seam fastball (95 MPH, 16.1" IVB from a below-average release height). Its deceptive carry has led to a 30% whiff rate on the pitch in the early going. Right-handed SP Chad Dallas is healthy again after Tommy John surgery and has gotten off to a blistering start with a 46.1% whiff rate. He is a true unicorn with some of the wildest movement profiles in the organization; his four-seamer sits just 93 MPH with only 13" of IVB but 1" of arm-side movement, making it decidedly Sonny Gray-esque thanks to its cutting action. The sweeper is downright devastating, averaging 17" of glove-side action so far this spring. Meanwhile, his low-90s cutter gets 7" of glove-side coupled with 10" of carry. He has a rare talent for spinning the ball and figures to start the year in Buffalo, but would fit right in amongst the big league staff and its growing number of strange pitch shapes. All stats entering Thursday, February 26. View full article

Spring training games start this weekend. I invite you to take a moment and think back to what the Blue Jays' roster looked like a year ago today. Some of the main characters are still around, but not even a trip to the World Series was enough to make this team immune to the winds of offseason change, least of all on the pitching side. There was considerable turnover in the rotation and the bullpen as the Jays try to stay ahead of the curve in a division that's only getting more hyper-competitive. At this point, all notable public player projection systems have given their two cents on how this season will unfold. Naturally, each forecasting model on sites like FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus is built on slightly different foundations. Two models can come to entirely different conclusions on a given player's prognosis. On FanGraphs alone, there are a handful of algorithms dedicated to predicting every major leaguer's immediate future. ZiPS uses historical comps to estimate future performance. Steamer uses underlying numbers and regresses toward league average. FGDC averages ZiPS and Steamer with a more precise playing time projection. Similar to Steamer in nature are The Bat and The Bat X, with the latter incorporating more Statcast data. ATC is an elaborate aggregate of all those systems. OOPSY is more exploratory, considering pitch modelling and bat tracking more than its predecessors. What do these models think about the Blue Jays’ pitching staff in 2026? Which is most optimistic? Which is least optimistic? Who are the specific pitchers they find common ground on, and who has a wide range of outcomes? In Agreement It's always a comforting sign for a fanbase when the computers have a shared, positive consensus on their team's most expensive addition of the winter. Across the board, Dylan Cease is pegged for a mid-3.00s ERA and FIP by the FanGraphs projections roundtable. The proverbial crystal balls are quite confident he'll rebound from an inconsistent 2025 and become the team's best starting pitcher. Derek Carty's The Bat X provides the most glowing report, predicting a 3.37 ERA for Cease across 29 starts and 171 IP. Cease's reputation as a strikeout pitcher certainly precedes him, but Steamer is the most bullish on him suppressing the walks that have plagued him from time to time (proj. 8.7% BB rate). By contrast, ATC is on the low end with a 3.72 ERA estimate. A minuscule difference of 0.35 runs between the best and worst ERA projections is a ringing endorsement of Cease's ability to live up to the peripherals and be a true ace in Toronto. Setting expectations for rookies, especially after the run that Trey Yesavage went on to cap off 2025, can be a tough exercise. However, the models paint a pretty clear picture. Between FanGraphs' various models, Yesavage has the lowest standard deviation in FIP projections of anyone on this staff. Unsurprisingly, the stuff-based OOPSY likes him the most (3.39 ERA, 3.67 FIP), while The Bat thinks he'll be a little closer to average (3.86 ERA, 3.94 FIP). The alien release point, high-vert fastball, dizzying splitter, and reverse slider make for an enigmatic package. The most crucial task for Yesavage this year will be staying ahead of hitters; he had them perplexed for most of October, but baseball is a game of constant adjustment and readjustment. In any case, he's one of the more talented young pitchers the organization has seen in some time. As with prospects, it can be tough to put a finger on pitchers coming in from overseas. Yet, as with Yesavage, the models have conviction in their optimism for Cody Ponce in what'll be his second go-around at the MLB level. He isn't the same pitcher he was when we last saw him with the Pirates, and the FanGraphs projections are buying into his stellar showing in the KBO, with a composite 4.07 ERA/3.94 FIP outlook. Ponce has the tightest forecasted ERA window of any of his teammates, with Steamer more sold than the rest (3.94 ERA, 3.81 FIP) and ZiPS falling on the other end of the spectrum (4.20 ERA, 4.13 FIP). He looks like a perfectly capable back-of-the-rotation arm from that standpoint, something the Blue Jays would surely be happy with considering his relatively low free agent price tag. In Disagreement It was a strange first year back in the organization for Jeff Hoffman. There were pronounced highs and lows, and he underperformed some of his peripherals, but after some speculation that someone else would be the closer in 2026, it looks like it's his job to lose once again. Most of the classic "luck" indicators can't make heads or tails of what happened last year: His BABIP was low, his HR/FB% was very high, and his xERA was considerably lower than reality, albeit still higher than it was with the Phillies. The projections are thus conflicted as well; OOPSY (3.36 ERA, 3.61 FIP) and ZiPS (3.38 ERA, 3.74 FIP) are believers while The Bat is not (4.08 ERA, 4.06 FIP). It's important to note that despite the wide range of possibilities, Hoffman's forecast stands out relative to his colleagues. His 3.60 composite ERA projection is the third-lowest of the pitchers widely expected to break camp. There's also some contention regarding Louis Varland. The bullpen's chief workhorse has OOPSY convinced (3.20 ERA, 3.40 FIP), which, again, shouldn't be too surprising given how electric the stuff is. On the other hand, a fastball that regularly touches 100, coupled with the hardest knuckle curve in the sport and decent command, isn't enough to convince The Bat X (4.23 ERA, 4.00 FIP). Varland has the highest standard deviation in ERA and FIP projections of anyone who's likely guaranteed an Opening Day roster spot, but as with Hoffman, the averages paint a more reassuring picture. His 3.72 composite ERA projection slots right behind the closer as fourth-best on the team. Among those turning heads early in camp is Ricky Tiedemann, who's healthy for the first time in a while and inserting himself into that Opening Day roster conversation. The talent is undeniable for the former third-round pick, but considering the lack of clarity as to his role if he does make the team and his injury history, the computers are divided on him. OOPSY has him down for a 3.73 ERA and a 3.88 FIP, which would be an encouraging development but relatively inconsequential at the team level, given his playing time projection of 19 appearances and 32 innings. ZiPS thinks it'll be a slower climb (4.68 ERA, 4.74 FIP), but the fact that he's off the IL and ready to create some tough decisions for the coaching staff is a refreshing sign for everyone in the organization. The Verdict Out of the wealth of projection systems at FanGraphs, Steamer has the lowest team-wide ERA for the Blue Jays in 2026, while ZiPS has the highest. More Notes This season's forecast is strong for Brendon Little. On aggregate, he has the lowest ERA (3.46) and second-lowest FIP (3.70) projection on the staff. He burned out down the stretch and was not reliable in October, but he was one of the most effective lefty relievers in baseball during the first half and frequently got the ball in high-leverage spots. Finishing the season the way he starts and putting up a better fight against fatigue will be key. Thanks to the additions in the bullpen, Braydon Fisher is not guaranteed a big-league job right out of the gate. The projection systems think he should be, though, as he has the fifth-lowest composite ERA projection of the group (3.74). Fisher was acquired from the Dodgers for Cavan Biggio in 2024, and the Blue Jays have certainly gotten what they wanted so far out of that deal. Both on the surface and below, he has had a glowing start to his big league career. Eventually, the bullpen will welcome back Yimi García, who will start the year on the IL after he battled injury for most of last season. When the Blue Jays re-acquired him in free agency last winter, it was thought that he could compete with Hoffman for the closing job, and while it remains to be seen how his rehab will affect his stuff, most of the projection systems are confident. Garcia's aggregate ERA projection is 3.75, right behind Fisher’s, and hopefully a positive omen that he'll work his way back to high-leverage work sooner than later. View full article

After the disappointing news that Anthony Santander would be sidelined for five to six months following surgery on his left shoulder, Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins quieted the masses by declaring the team was "not significantly involved" in the market for additions to the outfield. The surplus of corner outfielders on the big league roster would finally be free to sort itself out with spring training games getting underway soon. So much for that. On Friday morning, the Jays double-backed on their unsuspecting fanbase by trading for Jesús Sánchez. Joey Loperfido is going back to Houston in return, rejoining the team that drafted him five years ago. The Yusei Kikuchi trade tree has grown another branch. The Blue Jays swapped one outfielder for another in this one. For those unfamiliar, Sánchez is a big lefty-hitting right fielder by trade who is coming off a down year but has been a quality bat at this level before; he debuted in 2020 and is under team control for this year and next. He has a prodigiously thunderous bat – here's a home run of his from a couple years ago that threatened to leave the cavernous Marlins Park, and who could forget this demolition in 2022 – yet he has never hit more than 18 homers or 25 doubles in a season, and is decidedly a power-over-plate-skills type of hitter. Sánchez's best years to this point were 2023 and 2024 with Miami. He finished with a wRC+ of 108 and 101, and fWAR totals of 1.4 and 1.6, respectively. He doesn't possess remarkable sprint speed but is more of a factor on the bases than he might seem at first glance, with 29 steals over the past two seasons. The defensive analytics can't seem to agree on how good he is in the field: In 2025, he saved 7 runs in right field according to DRS, but was a net neutral according to Statcast's fielding run value. He has posted 99th-percentile maximum exit velocities before and hit some of the most physically impressive home runs you can find. He also just recorded the first single-season strikeout rate under 25% of his career. There's clearly a lot to build on here, and the Blue Jays are going to take their shot at getting the most out of him. The Astros traded for him at the 2025 deadline in hopes of doing the same thing, but did not succeed, as Sánchez hit under .200 and posted a .611 OPS in 48 games for them. Still, Atkins acknowledged he has "always liked" Sánchez and has been interested in acquiring him for a while. It's not hard to see why. Sánchez has a strong reputation among analytically-inclined fans, thanks in large part to his 93rd-percentile bat speed. His barrel rate has been 11% or better in each of the past three seasons, and he has always crushed the baseball. What's impressive about his bat speed is that he achieves it despite having a short swing: No hitter in baseball with a below-average swing length and at least 200 PA in 2025 had a higher average bat speed than Sánchez's 75.9 mph. Displaying this much strength while remaining short to the ball is an extremely rare trait, even in an age in which teams are actively seeking hitters with that fast-short swing archetype. Jesús Sánchez Swing Mechanics Comps, 2025 Hitter Bat Speed Swing Length Swing Tilt Jesús Sánchez 75.9 6.9' 28° Bobby Witt Jr. 74.4 7.0' 29° Drake Baldwin 75.4 7.2' 31° Gunnar Henderson 75.5 7.3' 29° Atkins also made it sound like Sánchez will get more than his fair share of playing time against right-handed pitching, which is welcome news for a team that was looking to add power from the left side all offseason. Even in 2025, a year that saw Sánchez record a 93 wRC+ after that post-trade backslide in Houston, he had a 104 wRC+ versus righties. For his career, he has a 111 wRC+ and a SLG of .450 in those matchups. Those career marks are both better than what Nathan Lukes, Toronto's other remaining lefty-hitting corner outfielder with Santander sidelined, managed in 2025. Despite that, Atkins was quick to heap praise on Lukes during his media availability on Friday, saying the team wouldn't be afraid to slot both him and Sánchez in the outfield while moving Addison Barger to the infield on certain days when the opposing starting pitcher is right-handed. Lukes's plate coverage and his ability to put the ball in play are sure to come in handy, and the Jays do not appear to be shying away from Tetris-ing their lineup vs. RHP for the time being. All indications point to Sánchez, Lukes, Barger, and Kazuma Okamoto having fluid roles in these situations to start the year. Even though Sánchez has hardly ever been above-average at anything that doesn't have to do with power from an offensive standpoint, he progressed in other areas of his game in 2025. Not to a shocking extent or anything, but enough to make one wonder why his results sagged: Jesús Sánchez Contact & Discipline, 2023-25 Year K% BB% Zone Contact% Chase% 2023 26.6% 9.5% 78.9% 31.4% 2024 26.1% 7.6% 78.1% 36.1% 2025 22.9% 8.5% 82.2% 30.6% One of the reasons his talent hasn't fully translated to results is the fact that he hasn't pulled the ball enough, even during his most productive seasons. Too many loud outs to the biggest part of the ballpark isn't the most conducive use of the raw power Sánchez has. He also reversed this trend in 2025, going from a decidedly below-average 12.2% pull-air rate the year before to a 16.9% mark, a hair above league average. Above everything else, there are two main things holding Sánchez back. Most importantly, he simply cannot hit lefties. I wish I were exaggerating, but he's probably a non-option to face them. In fairness, the Jays have the likes of Okamoto, Davis Schneider, and Ernie Clement to pick up the slack there, but the lineup will be less powerful against southpaws thanks to Sánchez's absence. He ran a 33 wRC+ vs LHP in 2025, slightly reducing his career mark...to 41. He has more than quadruple the amount of plate appearances against righties as a big leaguer. Again, this roster has enough lefty mashers to offset that concern, but his effectiveness being strictly limited to one handedness is a crucial caveat to remember before dreaming too big on his bat speed. The other consistent knock on Sánchez, albeit the one that should theoretically be easier to fix, is that he hits too many groundballs. His groundball rate has sat in the high-40s for most of his career, too high for someone of his skill set. Outlier bat speed and exit velocities become compromised when the hitter cannot lift or pull, which is the dilemma Sánchez was dealing with until 2025, when he started to get a handle on how to pull again. His average contact point moved more than four inches towards the pitcher compared to 2024, and he started turning on the ball without sacrificing contact quantity. Maybe David Popkins and company continue to lean into that? It's also important to note that most of the other outlier fast-short swing guys have steep swing tilts better geared toward hitting the ball in the air (Pete Alonso, Riley Greene, Kyle Stowers). Changing tilt is hard to do year over year, but it might be worthwhile to try for Sánchez. With respect to balls in play, the goal for both him and the Blue Jays should be to make the most of those 100+ mph bullets we know he has in him. It's an exciting opportunity for Toronto's hitting coaches, and an exciting opportunity for the fanbase to watch someone who can do things on the field that no others can. Things didn't work out for Sánchez in Houston, but every underlying hint that suggests 25-homer power and a fearsome righty masher remains. With this move, the Jays have swiftly, intelligently, and calmly responded to the unfortunate timing and circumstance of the Santander injury. Loperfido has an intriguing skill set in his own right and has certainly earned a fair shot in the big leagues by now, but this is a logical chance to take for a team with high aspirations that just took a blow on the injury front, especially when the newcomer's old team happens to be cutting costs. The stars aligned for a hitter with untapped potential to join the Blue Jays at an opportune time. Perhaps Toronto is the place where Jesús Sánchez will truly come into his own. View full article

The roster construction of the past few iterations of the Toronto Blue Jays has introduced fans to the reality that the standard of offensive production for position players varies widely based on how useful they are in the field. Beginning in 2023, the front office and coaching staff placed a strong emphasis on team defense, a priority that's still evident throughout today's roster. Daulton Varsho, and Ernie Clement are examples of guys who have been slam-dunk elite defenders every year, so for them to be considered positive contributors, their hitting doesn't have to be as effective as everyone else in the lineup. The state of affairs was problematic a couple of years ago because players like Varsho and Matt Chapman had very little offensive support around them, leading to the failing of an elite pitching staff and a playoff run that was (and long felt) over before it started. Nowadays, it's more practical to have someone like Clement assuming an everyday role because of the offensive firepower up and down the lineup. Any delightful revelations from those who have less pressure on them to deliver at the plate, such as Clement breaking the all-time single-postseason hits record and Varsho clubbing 20 homers in 71 games in 2025, are merely added bonuses. Few players in baseball illustrate this concept better than Andrés Giménez. With virtually no indication that it was coming, the Blue Jays traded for him last offseason, knowing he was a glove-first guy. From 2022-24, only Dansby Swanson was a more valuable defensive infielder than Giménez, according to Statcast. Someone that integral to run prevention at a premium position doesn't need to be an above-average hitter to be considered a good player. Case in point: In 2023, Giménez posted a 96 wRC+ with the Guardians, just a smidge below league-average offensive production. According to Fangraphs, he was still worth 3.8 WAR, enough to make him a top-eight second baseman in the game. Baseball Reference had him at 5.0 WAR. A below-average hitter who was still worth five wins! All else equal, Giménez probably only needs to maintain a wRC+ of 80 or greater to retain the status of a solid contributor at shortstop. There are usually only three to five position players every year who are that unproductive yet take enough at-bats to qualify for all major awards. Here's the bad news: He couldn't even manage to clear that line in his first season with Toronto. Amidst a handful of injury troubles, Giménez registered a 70 wRC+ in 2025. He was more than fine on defense, finishing with 1.0 fWAR in 101 games, but it was still a career-worst offensive season by almost every metric. I don't think Giménez should aim for a wRC+ of 80. That would be selling him a little short. Sure, he's probably the 10th-best hitter on the team as it is, but he also makes a lot of money: $15.6 million this year, and $23.6 million every year from 2027-29 before the Blue Jays get to decide whether they want to exercise a $23 million club option for 2030. His career wRC+ is 98, and he'll likely be here a while. He's not supposed to be a good hitter every year, but can he be just good enough that, inclusive of his defense, he rejoins the conversation of MLB's elite middle infielders? For those who need a refresher on Giménez's career path, it's been a rather peculiar journey for the focal point of the package Cleveland got from the Mets for Francisco Lindor. His first full season at age 23 was a 141 wRC+, 6.0-fWAR masterclass. Again, his defense has remained every bit as good as it was then, but the ensuing years saw him go from an elite hitter to about average to decidedly below-average to the guy we saw last year. His batting average on balls in play (BABIP) trend over that timespan is a whiplash-inducing roller coaster: Andrés Giménez Hitting, 2022-25 Year wRC+ BABIP lg BABIP 2022 141 .353 .290 2023 96 .289 .297 2024 83 .286 .291 2025 70 .239 .291 Giménez got paid after a 2022 season that, especially in hindsight, was a mirage in some ways. Right off the bat, a .353 BABIP for a guy with a low-80s zone contact rate and a barely-above-average line drive rate is a pretty serious red flag. His wOBA exceeded his xwOBA by 32 points that year, while his batting average cleared his xBA by 38. That's enough top-level evidence to suggest regression lies ahead, and it did: His BABIP returned to league norms for the next two seasons, taking his production to about the same level. In 2025, though, the baseball gods decided to curse him with a polar reversal of the BABIP luck he accrued three years before. Giménez doesn't swing fast or hit the ball hard or lay off bad pitches, and his contact ability is mediocre. He'll likely never be someone who can finagle his way to consistent overperformance on balls in play based on his skill set, but a .239 BABIP is far enough in the other direction that we can assume misfortune is at play at first glance. Let's look at some of the underlying numbers to verify that: Andrés Giménez Advanced Hitting, 2022-25 Year Zone Swing% Chase% Zone Contact% Out-of-Zone Contact% LD% PU% Barrel% EV90 Bat Speed 90 2022 70.9% 38.4% 81.2% 61.0% 24.4% 8.0% 6.2% 102.8 2023 71.0% 40.0% 81.6% 63.5% 21.9% 9.3% 5.5% 102.3 73.8 2024 74.6% 37.4% 84.3% 62.4% 24.0% 6.5% 2.8% 101.0 73.7 2025 67.2% 34.6% 81.6% 64.6% 26.2% 5.6% 3.0% 100.8 74.2 The most immediately concerning patterns here are a slow decline in top-end exit velocity and a barrel rate that has yet to match 2022, but as a whole, I don't see anything warranting a ~50-point drop in BABIP from 2024 to 2025. Sure, he made a little less contact on hittable pitches, but he slightly dialed back his free-swinging ways, hit more line drives, and hit fewer popups. Although his profile remains that of a below-average hitter, he didn't deserve the fate that befell him last year. Another quirk about Giménez that my editor, Leo Morgenstern, astutely pointed out in the early stages of preparing this piece: During his first two years in the league, he was basically a platoon-neutral lefty hitter, if not slightly reverse-platoon. Since then, he has suddenly forgotten how to hit lefty pitching: Year wRC+ vs LHP wRC+ vs RHP xwOBA vs LHP xwOBA vs RHP 2022 159 136 .320 .335 2023 100 95 .301 .296 2024 64 90 .268 .313 2025 39 80 .274 .318 His quality of contact (in tandem with his K/BB rate) has notably declined against same-handed pitching throughout the sample, which mostly boils down to increasingly poor swing decisions and suboptimal launch angles of hard-hit balls. Once again, though, the BABIP monster is the driving force. Observe Giménez's BABIP vs LHP from 2022-25: .386, .300, .277, .213. Such a violent shift across both ends of the spectrum figures to even out in some way. One thing that falls under the radar about Giménez's offensive value: He's a machine on the bases. He stole 20 bases during that magical 2022 campaign before stealing 30 each in 2023 and 2024 once the pitch clock came into the picture. I'm not sure we'll see 30 in 2026 because the quad and ankle injuries he suffered brought him down to 65th-percentile sprint speed (as opposed to 94th-percentile in 2022), but I'm sure the Blue Jays would gladly take 20. For all the things their offense did well in 2025, baserunning was not one of them. They were 12th in the AL in baserunning run value per Statcast, and 14th in stolen bases, ahead of only the Tigers. Giménez has what it takes to move them away from the bottom of the pile. The level of offense the Toronto Blue Jays received from Bo Bichette for most of the past half-decade was nothing short of a luxury at the shortstop position. Andrés Giménez won't hit like that, but he's probably going to be better than 2025 would indicate. Some upward regression to the mean appears to be in order based on the trajectory of his career to this point, and that might be all he needs. Between his baserunning and his world-class defense, a below-average offensive output is just fine. A wRC+ around 80 is likely enough to make him a positive contributor overall, and if he gets into the 90s, he'll approach four-win territory if healthy. That would make him a top-10 shortstop in the game, one with a very similar overall impact to Bichette, albeit with a drastically different style of play. FanGraphs' projection systems seem to agree with this outlook: Giménez's average wRC+ forecast for 2026 between their six distinct models is 90. So, then, let us root for a 10%-below-average performance from Giménez at the plate this year. It'll make his wizardry with the glove that much sweeter. View full article

As consequential as 2025 was for the Blue Jays at the big league level, things were just as promising for their minor league pitching. It's been a long time since they've developed a homegrown starter that has lasted more than a handful of years in MLB before switching teams or roles, and that will have to change if they hope to be competitive long-term. After floating in the proverbial abyss for most of our short-term memory, the system has surged over the past year and a half, with Trey Yesavage, Johnny King, and Gage Stanifer breaking out to project as future starters. Khal Stephen was also part of that group before he was dealt to Cleveland for Shane Bieber at the deadline. Ricky Tiedemann is essentially fully recovered from Tommy John surgery. The Blue Jays' recent player development hires, including amateur scouting director Marc Tramuta and minor league pitching director Justin Lehr, shortly preceded this wave of positive momentum. While the recent lack of quality pitching to come from within has drawn the ire of many fans who care for sustainability (and has been offset by ownership's willingness to invest in winning), early returns suggest the Blue Jays have the right minds in place to end that drought. Absent from the list of pitchers who saw their stock rise in 2025 is righty Jake Bloss, who made six starts before tearing his UCL. He won't be fully recovered for spring training but should be back at some point later in the year. Bloss, who will be 25 in June, was the headliner in the prospect package Toronto managed to secure for Yusei Kikuchi, joining the franchise alongside Joey Loperfido and Will Wagner. He hasn't yet gotten outstanding results in Triple A, with an ERA over 6.50 in 14 starts since the trade. Command is the main culprit; his walk rate in Buffalo is a few ticks over 11%, and his zone rate is around 45% – considerably below-average. On a positive note, he has the stuff to succeed, with an in-zone swing-and-miss rate exceeding 15% post-trade. Heads were turned last week when FanGraphs listed Bloss as the Blue Jays' third-best prospect in their annual top prospect ranking, giving him a future value (FV) grade of 50 on the traditional 20-80 scouting scale. Their evaluators are optimistic about his chances to become a regular mid-rotation starter at the MLB level. Of course, some other outlets remain a little more skeptical after the injury; Baseball America has Bloss at #9 in the system, and MLB Pipeline's most recent update has him at #8. That FanGraphs ranked him so highly even after major elbow surgery, though, is nothing short of a ringing endorsement. That the Blue Jays got him and two others for what ended up being a pure rental was nothing short of a decisive victory. What's unfortunate about Bloss's injury is that the Jays had already begun to tinker with his pitch mix in an intriguing way over the 2024-25 offseason. He entered last year relying noticeably more on his changeup while dialing back his sinker. He also cast his sweeper aside after reworking his gyro slider, which was already a good out pitch, into a version that had more drop and more cut, effectively becoming a hybrid of the two slider shapes he was previously working with. How this all changes post-surgery is something to watch, but in general, pitchers seem less affected by UCL surgery now than they ever have. That's a good thing, because Bloss's stuff comps are rather encouraging. He leads with a mid-90s four-seamer with tons of carry and notable cut action. When accounting for his nearly seven feet of extension, the heater is reminiscent of Padres reliever Jeremiah Estrada's notorious fastball shape circa roughly 2023 when he was still with the Cubs, before he added a few ticks of velocity. A more recent comp for the pitch would be Red Sox reliever Justin Slaten's four-seamer. Estrada's 2023 fastball was an above-average pitch per Stuff+. Slaten's is one of the best in the game. Against righties, that new slider became Bloss's primary pitch in the starts leading up to his injury. It has somewhat of an unusual movement profile, with roughly seven inches of sweep (just a few short of being considered a sweeper) and positive induced vertical break, as well as mid-to-high-80s velocity. It compares closely to the ride-sweep shape coined by White Sox reliever Jordan Leasure, who isn't a household name but still notched a near 40% swing-and-miss rate with the pitch in 2025. It was one of the more effective sliders in MLB by run value (+7). Bloss's knack for cutting the ball makes him a good bet to handle same-handed hitters once he gets to MLB. Meanwhile, it was the changeup that was his preferred secondary against lefties. It doesn't have a special amount of separation from his fastball in terms of vertical movement or velocity, but it averaged nearly 13 inches of arm-side run, which contrasts nicely with the fastball's tendency to cut. Metrically, it likely won't be a plus pitch; it averaged 87 mph with less drop and run than most of the premier changeups around the league. Its closest shape comps are from 2023, a mostly uninspiring group led by Mike Clevinger, who got a 90 Stuff+ on the offering. If I had to guess, Bloss's newfound emphasis on it since coming to the Blue Jays has more to do with arsenal effects than anything else. In his TL;DR blurb on FanGraphs, former Pirates scout Brendan Gawlowski mentioned that a slower arm path might make Bloss's changeup easier to detect, but it runs enough that lefties don't usually square it up. His arsenal is rounded out by a sharp 12-6 curveball he deploys to both sides. It falls off the table with high-70s velocity and considerable glove-side action, often throwing off hitters expecting something else. It's biomechanically similar to the curve thrown by Giants starter Adrian Houser, which didn't receive glowing reports from pitch models by any means but was still useful last year thanks to Houser's elite command and deep pitch mix. The slider is Bloss's best breaking ball; he'll use this one more for effect. From time to time, he'll also mix in a sinker to righties, which runs like the changeup with a few more ticks of velocity and carry. The sinker's speed and movement profile has a top comp of new A's reliever Mark Leiter Jr. It's not a special pitch by any means, but it does the job to keep hitters guessing. He may have missed out on the shared success that Toronto's upper tier of pitching prospects enjoyed in 2025, but Jake Bloss is integral to the short-term future of the staff. Kevin Gausman and Shane Bieber are set to come off the books following this season, and Bloss is closer to being MLB-ready than most of the internal options the Blue Jays have to fill those spots. He has a deep arsenal led by a potentially plus-plus fastball and a bat-missing slider, and once he returns from injury and gets his accuracy under control, he'll be on the doorstep of a spot on the big league roster. After all, the state Toronto's incumbent starting pitching unit finds itself in is exactly why the Jays traded for him. As of now, there figures to be plenty of competition for rotation spots in 2027 and beyond. Bloss's first steps to proving he's an arm that can take on such a responsibility will begin in a few short months. View full article

There shouldn't be many Blue Jays fans out there who need to be reminded of how good Addison Barger is. He's a physical specimen with positional versatility and a knack for bludgeoning the baseball. He has 97th-percentile max exit velocity, 93rd-percentile bat speed, 99th-percentile arm strength, and is simply a fun watch at the plate and in the field. He first broke into the league in 2024 and mostly struggled out of the gate, but just a year later, he became the poster child for betting on tool-rich prospects, delivering a 188 wRC+ in the postseason despite not truly finding his groove until Game 6 of the ALCS. Only, his high-upside skill set has yet to pay dividends over a full 162-game schedule. His offensive results in 2025 were merely good, not great. He had his first extended hot stretch in May and came into the All-Star break with a 125 wRC+, but finished the regular season at 107 after a choppy second half. He had a wRC+ over 140 in two separate months, but straddled the Mendoza Line post-trade deadline. Especially for someone with Barger's raw power, consistency is often synonymous with discipline: He chased pitches at a rate in excess of 40% in July to set the stage for a cold August, but was at his most patient in September before catching fire in October. Concurrently, he was prone to extended periods of striking out at a 30% clip, but that rate will sit in the low-20s when he's at his best. Of course, it was his first full season in the league. He's only 26 years old and has just 727 regular season plate appearances to his name. He was an elite hitter for a greater portion of 2025 than he was hovering around replacement level, and saying the best is yet to come for him is an opinion that would fall into the category of freezing cold takes. Still, he hasn't proved himself worthy of an All-Star nod or anything of the sort. There are holes in Barger's game that prevented him from taking a truly meteoric rise last year. What are they? The low-hanging fruit here is his plate skills. His chase, swing-and-miss, strikeout, and walk rates all placed between the 30th and 36th percentiles, and for that higher-than-average chase tendency, the rate at which he swung at strikes was actually below-average, indicating poor swing decisions overall (and as we now know, the discipline in particular can come and go at a moment's notice). He also recorded his fair share of mishits, evidenced by a 25th-percentile squared-up percentage, which is Statcast's measure for collision efficiency on contact. I don't want to spend too much time harping on him for this. It's a simple fact that hitters of this archetype, ones that swing hard with a high capacity to do damage and subpar bat-to-ball abilities, are likelier to experience a much wider range of outcomes over the course of a season compared to those with a lower ceiling but better plate skills (our beloved Ernie Clement, for example). Besides, it's not like his contact or his selectivity is bad enough that he's a below-average hitter. I'd be able to make a significant dent in the supply of the nearest vending machine if I had a dollar for every time John Schneider has told the media that he preaches "being yourself" to his players. He says it a lot because doing what you're good at is a sound philosophy. If Addison Barger tries too hard to hit .290, he risks losing his calling card: damage ability. This version of him, the one that doesn't have a .370 OBP or a low-90s zone contact rate, can be great. No need to reinvent the wheel. It may seem counterintuitive given his high bat speed, flat swing tilt, and general strength, but his pitch type splits from 2025 indicate some struggles with fastballs. Observe: Pitch Group Run Value Zone Swing% Chase% Zone Contact% wOBACON EV90 Bat Speed 90 Barrel% HH LA° Fastballs -5 65.3% 30.8% 81.8% .380 105.3 mph 80.3 mph 11.5% 8.5° Non-Fastballs 6 67.9% 31.2% 82.3% .434 107.1 mph 80.0 mph 11.4% 9.1° Fastballs include four-seamers, sinkers, and cutters. It's worth noting the average chase rate on secondary pitches is about seven points higher than on fastballs, so it appears Barger simply doesn't have a good eye for the latter. Despite similar top-end bat speeds, contact rates, and batted ball angles on hard hits between these two groupings, he makes better swing decisions, hits the ball harder, and gets better results on contact against the slow stuff. In theory, if he saw fastballs better, everything else would play up too. He'd be likelier to make more contact, and more quality contact at that, if he swung at better pitches. This is particularly true at the top of, and just above, the strike zone, where most of his swings and misses against velocity were. However, a deeper look at the bat tracking splits tells a much more revealing story: Pitch Group Attack Angle ° Attack Direction ° (pull = lower) Pulled Flyball% Fastballs 5° 6° 5.8% Non-Fastballs 13° -14° 8.7% It's timing. I included pulled flyball rate at the end to emphasize what attack angle and direction tell us. Attack angle is in many ways a counterpart to launch angle, measuring the angle at which the sweet spot is traveling at contact point. Attack direction shows the position of the swing from a horizontal standpoint. Barger had a ~70th-percentile pull air rate in 2025, and most of that was happening against secondaries. He couldn't position his swing to hit home runs off fastballs with regularity. He has power to all fields, so this could be by design to an extent, but regardless, it came at an apparent cost to his propensity for turning on velocity. He hit secondaries for grounders at a higher frequency than fastballs, but his popup rate on heaters was nearly double in comparison. Barger made some significant overhauls to his swing in 2025, adjusting his stance and catching the ball an average of 4.3 inches further in front of home plate than he did the year before, one of the largest increases in the league. Naturally, secondaries have a shallower average contact point than fastballs (they aren't as fast!), but he could stand to lean into that trend a little further to try to rework how he times the hard stuff. Resetting timing on fastballs is a rather acute adjustment. From a thousand-foot view, if Barger wants to take another sizeable leap in 2026, he could also work on his swing against lefty pitching. He only saw 89 plate appearances against them last year, which resulted in a run value of -3. He still tore the cover off the ball when he managed to put it in play, but those poor results were mostly driven by suboptimal batted ball angles, disproportionate swing decisions, and low contact rates. His contact point was also much deeper than it was against righties, another telltale sign he didn't pick the ball up out of their hands. A platoon weakness is not uncommon among young lefty sluggers, and Barger is surely working on that through the offseason, but taking more competitive at-bats in same-handed matchups would go a long way toward earning him the unbridled trust of his coaching staff. It's hard not to be excited about what Barger could accomplish in 2026. He has tantalizing bat speed and exit velocities and has shown he can lift and pull the ball without being totally reliant on one type of swing. The 2018 sixth-rounder showed impressive flashes of the player he hopes to become with more stability moving forward, already having developed from an extremely raw power-inclined prospect to an above-average third baseman/right fielder. If October was any indication, most of his road to becoming a truly excellent staple in this lineup has already been travelled, with solving lefty pitching and timing up velocity being some of the only boxes he has left to check on the way. In any case, with the sweepstakes for both Kyle Tucker and Bo Bichette being won elsewhere, his place on this roster is that much more important. View full article

It's forecasting season! An annual staple at the dawn of the new year is the gradual release of player projections for the upcoming campaign on websites such as FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus. FanGraphs alone hosts an entire army of projection models, each with its own estimates and methodology. Steamer uses basic underlying numbers and regresses players toward league average. The Bat is based on a similar approach, while its newer variant, The Bat X, incorporates Statcast data to a heightened degree. ATC aggregates all existing projection systems based on what specific stats they're good at forecasting – averaging the results of multiple models is thought by many to be the most reliable method of projecting players. More recently, OOPSY was introduced, the first of its kind to use pitch modelling and bat tracking data in its forecasts. Today, though, we'll be looking at the Szymborski Projection System, or ZiPS, created by Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs. It has been around for longer than all the other ones mentioned above, and it's rather unique in that it identifies a series of close historical comparables for each player and prognosticates performance based on how the careers of their comps unfolded. Szymborski has been rolling out ZiPS projections by team over at FanGraphs since November, and on Tuesday morning, he released the system's first batch of estimates for the Toronto Blue Jays. How does ZiPS feel about the Jays going into 2026? Position Players: Few Weaknesses Suffice to say, the forecast is strong for Toronto's infield. Andrés Giménez and Ernie Clement form a potent defensive duo up the middle, and Kazuma Okamoto has enough offensive upside to be an above-average third baseman if his fielding doesn't fall off a cliff; his closest comp according to ZiPS is longtime Mariner Kyle Seager. It's easy to forget, given how well his October went, but Vladimir Guerrero Jr. could easily have a better regular season than he did in 2025, and advanced offensive stats have long stood by him. Of note: Two of Guerrero's top three closest comps are Albert Pujols and Rafael Palmeiro. That'll work, as will the 4.9 combined fWAR that Alejandro Kirk and Tyler Heineman are predicted to accrue. ZiPS is clearly sold on the offensive strides Kirk made last year, and with Addison Barger and Davis Schneider available to fill in gaps in the infield from time to time, there isn't a single hole in this section of the roster. ZiPS is also optimistic about what Daulton Varsho could do in a full season after what he flashed a season ago, banking on the rare and impressive power + defense combo he boasts at a premium position. The corner outfield and DH positions are a bit of a mess in terms of playing time estimates, with more capable players than spots on the roster, but regardless of who gets the lion's share of the reps, it's unlikely that one specific bat will hold the Jays back anywhere. This is a high-floor offense that still features a diverse set of skills from top to bottom after scoring the second-most runs in the AL in 2025. If they can add another elite bat, their ceiling will be pushed as well. A Deep Bullpen Many of you may be surprised at how highly ZiPS thinks of this bullpen. At the time of writing, these projections have been released for 25 teams (the Orioles, Mets, Cubs, Cardinals, and Dodgers are still to come). Toronto's combined reliever fWAR projection of 3.9 is the fourth-highest of the teams that Szymborski has sized up so far, behind only the Brewers, Phillies and Red Sox, and tied with the Guardians. While the Jays lack an A-list closer, ZiPS has the sixth-to-eighth-inning collection as one of the best in the league. It's delightfully high on Tommy Nance and gave a resounding thumbs-up to the Tyler Rogers signing. He may not be Jhoan Duran or Mason Miller, but readers would surely be delighted to see the 3.38 ERA, 74 strikeouts, 23 walks, and *eight* home runs allowed that Jeff Hoffman is pegged for across 61.1 projected innings pitched. Further down the list, ZiPS is also sold on Braydon Fisher's breakout 2025, estimating a 27.1% K rate for him this year – third-highest on the staff behind Hoffman and Dylan Cease. In fact, the model is content enough with this group to the point that Szymborski opined the team could even trade a reliever if another contender happens to need one early in the season. I wouldn't bet on that, as injuries and underperformance are always possible, but it speaks to the progress we've seen since the 2024 bullpen clocked in as one of the worst in baseball. The overarching theme is availability: There are a ton of bulldogs back there, with Eric Lauer capable of going multiple innings (as well as José Berríos if he decides he's okay with relief work), Louis Varland and Rogers as durable as they come, and enough strikeout guys to balance it out in Hoffman, Yimi García, Brendon Little, Nance, Fisher, and Mason Fluharty. Wide Range of Outcomes in Rotation This is where ZiPS isn't as confident. It likes the additions that have been made so far, with Cease good enough to be the de facto ace of the staff and Cody Ponce receiving a relatively optimistic projection as far as fifth starters go. However, between Shane Bieber's health, Trey Yesavage's lack of experience, and Ponce coming off unremarkable seasons in Japan before suddenly exploding onto the scene in Korea (he hasn't pitched in the big leagues since 2021), there is a moderate amount of risk. Interestingly, Szymborski argues that because of what could go wrong here (Bieber battles injury all year, Yesavage regresses as the league adjusts to him, Ponce doesn't translate as smoothly as hoped), the Blue Jays would improve their 2026 outlook more by signing one of the remaining starting pitchers on the free agent market instead of Kyle Tucker. Because Cease and Ponce were both acquired before the Winter Meetings, this train of thought likely hasn't occurred to many fans, but it's intriguing to consider. Of course, chasing a Framber Valdez or a Ranger Suárez would come with its own set of risks and affect the team far beyond 2026. Questions exist about Valdez's makeup, and Suárez's stuff is declining amidst a questionable bill of health. At this point, I'm not at all saying they should pursue either one, but ZiPS's diagnosis of the rotation as is helps to illustrate that, while its upside is undeniable, things could unfold in many different ways, and its floor is lower than that of the dynamic position player group. On the other hand, if things go well, a potential bounce-back from Berríos would merely be an added bonus, no matter what capacity he pitches in. The Verdict So, where does this leave us? With all that happened in 2025, there's only one thing left for this team to accomplish. ZiPS likes the position they're in. Not mentioned above are the Rays, which ZiPS currently sees as likely to hover around .500 again. If we add up Toronto's projected fWAR totals by position, the sum is 45.6. Add that to the common shorthand that a 0-WAR team would win 48 games, and the Blue Jays' projected ZiPS win total rounds up to 94 – exactly the same as last year. The AL East will be strong, but one more marquee addition ought to push the Blue Jays over the edge as the clear favourites. View full article