Major League Baseball has blown through the midpoint of the season with games on pause this week, as stars head to Seattle for the All-Star Game. Figured I would risk a turf war with Mr. McNee over in sports and give a midseason report card on the bluebirds.
With the Raptors’ teardown finally underway, the Jays are Toronto’s best hope for another parade, despite a less-than-stellar first half of the season. As the family drove south on Sunday from some holidays, we were treated to a two-out, game-tying home run from Danny Jansen followed by an extra-inning win in a game that they didn’t deserve to win, yet when the dust settled, the scoreboard showed a W.
Heading into the spring, there were few teams more hyped by baseball experts than the Blue Jays. Despite losing a couple bats from last year, new arrivals Daulton Varsho and Kevin Kiermaier promised a more balanced batting order, and Chris Bassitt joined Kevin Gausman and Alek Manoah to form what looked like a top pitching trio in the American League.
Sunday’s final game before the All-Star break seemed like a pretty good microcosm of the Blue Jays’ season thus far. Underwhelming starting pitching, zero fight at the plate, and a game that felt like they were losing the whole time, yet surprisingly won the game. Indeed, there are few MLB fans who would complain about a team currently nestled in a post-season spot, but it seems like this season has been more of a lurching from poor game to poor game than sustained periods of really good baseball. Perhaps it is nothing more than the fact that there was too much optimism in the spring and the analysts got it wrong about their potential, but this season feels like there could still be more coming.
Over the last couple years, we got used to Blue Jays batters mashing pitching of every type. It didn’t matter if the team got down by five in the third inning, it only took a couple pitches to wipe out massive deficits. This year we are seeing a team come back to earth on that front a little bit; there is no Blue Jay in the top 20 for home runs, slugging or OPS, with only Vladdy making it in to the top 20 for RBIs at No. 14 in the league.
The starting pitching has been able to eat some innings this year, with Gausman, Bassitt, and Jose Berrios all making it inside the top 20 for innings pitched so far. While not a perfect stat for performance on the part of your starters, if you’re bad you get pulled, so racking up those innings means at minimum you’ve been serviceable. Jordan Romano is in a three-way tie for the MLB lead in saves and the relievers have stayed in the top third of the league for ERA.
Defensive statistics can get a little complex, but after multiple years of having below-average defense, the Blue Jays have started to flash the leather. A metric referred to as Defensive Runs Saved (which measures the difficulty of the plays made and then ties a value to the runs that were saved or lost by performing either above or below average defense) shows a team with healthy improvements on the defensive side. New arrivals Varsho and Kiermaier are league leaders. Both are inside the top five as individuals and, together with solid D from backstop Alejandro Kirk (who is also inside the top 10), form the backbone of a top-three defense in the majors.
The silver lining here for fans is that the last couple years of fall baseball were hard reminders that loud offenses can get mighty quiet come October, and it is the little things like defense and smart baserunning that get you to the Fall Classic. Thankfully this team has a better start on the championship details than previous years. There are still some areas to tighten up and much of it rests on the big guns like Vladdy, Bo, and Springer.
There are still a lot of mental lapses on the basepaths; the Blue Jays are among league leaders for running into outs, with more than a couple games in recent memory turning into a loss after a brain cramp out on the bases. Hopefully another reliever or two could be found at the deadline while Manoah will seek to take his solid return start before the break and transform that into a second half resurgence. Jays fans can also hold out a bit of hope that starter Hyun-jin Ryu rediscovers the magic that landed him a four-year, $80 million contract a couple years ago as he works back from Tommy John surgery. Two starts in the minors have produced positive early returns – only one earned run over seven innings to go along with six strikeouts and no free passes.
With more than half the games of the 2023 season behind them, the Blue Jays don’t have a ton of wiggle room for any second half swoons. Currently they are holding down the final Wild Card spot with five teams less than five games behind them. Tampa Bay seems like a lock to take the AL East and the Jays have the hardest remaining schedule of the teams that they are fighting with for a playoff spot. A resurgent Manoah and a surprise pitching boost from Ryu could be just what the doctor ordered for this team as we hope for a 1993-esque fall here in Blue Jays country.
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Stewart Skinner is a local business owner, former political candidate, and has worked at Queen’s Park as a Policy Advisor to the Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs. He can be followed on Twitter: @modernfarmer.
