The Toronto Blue Jays‘ 2026 season doesn’t want a lot of a recap for the Canadian followers.
They comprehend it was nothing like 2025, when the Blue Jays made it to further innings in Sport 7 of the World Sequence.
The extra essential query to reply for the long run is: Why?
Why was it this a lot worse? Why did it go so flawed? Why did Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit single-digit residence runs? Why, why, why?
The one manner for the Blue Jays to make sure that 2027 is best is to reply these questions.
And a latest have a look at the issues by The Athletic’s Mitch Bannon did reveal one factor.
Blue Jays Downside
The headline of Bannon’s story begins with the phrases, “The Blue Jays have a sort.”
His complete story is about the truth that the Blue Jays actually do search out gamers who make numerous contact. They don’t wish to strike out. They wish to put the ball in play.
In fashionable MLB, that’s actually not an method taken by everybody, but it surely’s what the Blue Jays do.
Even their large slugger, Guerrero, makes contact way more incessantly than among the sport’s different large energy bats.
“Put merely, the Jays’ idea — which (Ross) Atkins alluded to in his season-ending information conferences — is that contact, greater than some other offensive trait, results in success in October,” Bannon writes. “Clearly lineups require stability, however when swing-and-miss pitchers function closely within the playoffs Toronto has wager that bat-to-ball hitters can crack them extra persistently than whiff-prone lineups. There are some within the group who imagine the Jays have gone somewhat too far within the contact course. However, nearly actually, there are others at the moment wanting on the playoff runs of Cleveland, Milwaukee and Tampa Bay — three of the eight-best contact groups in baseball this yr — as validation for his or her method.”
This season particularly in Toronto, one factor about that method went flawed.
Explaining Vladdy, Ernie Struggles
Two of the Blue Jays’ heroes within the 2025 postseason had been Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Ernie Clement. Each took large steps again in 2026.
Bannon features a key observe about them in his story:
“The chase charges of Clement, Guerrero, Nathan Lukes and Andrés Giménez all rose in 2026. Every nonetheless made contact properly above common, however that contact resulted in grounders, not game-changing doubles.”
Chase fee is the share of time a hitter swings at a pitch exterior the strike zone.
And when dangerous contact-makers swing at these pitches, they whiff. It’s a strike, however nothing extra.
When the Blue Jays’ contact wizards swing at these pitches, they hit them. They only don’t flip into onerous contact as a result of they’re harder pitches to hit. Normally, they flip into outs.
So whereas there’s no assure the Blue Jays can push their gamers again in a greater course in that regard, it’s not less than considerably clear the place there was an issue. Toronto was too good at hitting dangerous pitches weakly this season. It’s an space they will goal to enhance going ahead.
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