The Blue Birds took 2 of 3 games each against the Marlins, Rockies, and Yankees.
Hitting: Right now the Jays are an MLB-average club by OPS+. Daulton Varsho had homeruns 1, 2, 3, and 4 while at home to become the club-leader in HRs (Vladdy has 3).
It now seems pretty widely acknowledged that this year’s team is not the homerun-hitting club of a couple years ago. They’re ranked 2nd in the AL on doubles and 11th on homeruns. Can the Jays lean into a small ball approach? Kevin Barker of Blair and Barker reported that Bo said that both he and Vladdy are focused on hitting homeruns because it’ll earn them bigger contracts as two players whose contracts with the Jays expire next year.
Pitching: The Jays rank near bottom of the MLB by ERA+, but that aggregate number obscures a lot to be excited about. This homestand had wicked starting pitching (ERA ~ 1.20). With Gausman returning to form and Yariel Rodríguez’s strong debut, a rotation of Gausman, Berríos, Bassitt, Kikuchi, and Rodríguez/Manoah sounds pretty awesome. Will Berríos and Kikuchi stay as red hot as they’ve been?
Yimi García is clearly our best closer right now, but the rogers centre has this wrestling-like light show that they like to do for Jordan Romano. What will happen to the light shows if Romano ceases being our fixed 9th inning pitcher? I don’t like to see baseball decisions take a back seat to special effects, and I think we need to put the right pitcher in the right spot every game.
Defence: The Jays are top ten in fielding in the MLB.
Next up: The Blue Jays (10-9) now have a challenging 7-game road trip coming up: 3 games in San Diego (11-10), 4 games in Kansas (12-7). I can’t decide whether I think they’ll win 3 or 4.
Favourite moment: In one of the matchups against the Yanks – the first game against Gil I think – the Jays were struggling to get runs in. Daulton Varsho – typically a great baserunner – had missed an opportunity to score from 3rd on a ground ball earlier in the game. Now, the bases were loaded. Alejandro Kirk who is one of the league’s slowest runners was on 3rd. Springer was at the plate. There was a wild pitch. Springer let Alejandro know that he should steal home on the wild pitch: “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!!!” He was louder and more emphatic than any other player I’ve heard at the plate do this, probably because he knows Kirky is slow and has little room for error. It was a little amusing but mostly it was a heartwarming display of great and effective teamwork to me!