Toronto Blue Jays Summer Check Up

Toronto Blue Jays

35-41 (4^th in AL East)

Eye Popping Number

.236

As little as two seasons ago, the Toronto Blue Jays were one of the elite offenses in baseball. This season they’ve been among the worst. Their .236 batting average is the 6^th worst in the league this year, and while the trio of Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion, and Jose Bautista never had particularly high batting averages in the team’s hay day, this best encompasses the team’s struggles this year. The highest batting average on the team this year belongs to Teoscar Hernandez at .262. That’s uh, not good. They also play in a hitter’s park, with a spacious outfield which makes it even more head scratching why the team can’t find hits. It could just be unlucky, as the team has a .278 batting average on balls in play, third worst in baseball, which is usually a good measure of luck when you hit the ball. That should level off and get better as the season progresses.

Biggest Surprise

The Blue Jays’ stars have not shown up this year. In the case of Troy Tulowitzki, he literally hasn’t shown up because he’s been hurt all year (that’s not a surprise though, as his bones are made of glass). Josh Donaldson has also been hurt and played in half of the season, and done just ok in games he has played in. Marcus Stroman still hasn’t won a game and has a 6.80 ERA. Closer, Roberto Osuna was among the league leaders in saves before he got popped for a 75 game suspension for violating the league’s domestic violence policy. If they were going to have any shot at challenging for a wild card spot this season, they needed their stars to play like stars, and they just haven’t this year.

Player to Watch

So Vladimir Guerrero Jr. isn’t exactly on the Blue Jays yet, but the number one prospect in baseball is tearing it up in AA this year. Because the actual major league team isn’t playing well this year, you might as well tune in to the New Hampshire Fisher Cats where you can watch the sons of Hall of Famers Vladimir Guerrero and Craig Biggio. Guerrero Jr., in particular, is leading the team with a .407 batting average with 11 home runs and 18 doubles in only 53 games. You would think that the Blue Jays would call him up to add a spark to their depleted offense, but it looks like they are playing the service time game, and won’t call him up until next year so that they can have an extra year of control on his contract to keep their window for being competitive open longer.

What to Watch for at the Deadline

Barring some sort of win streak to put them back into the wild card hunt, the Blue Jays will be sellers this year, a position they haven’t been in for a while. They’ll have some valuable assests they can use to add more talented prospects to Guerrero and Biggio in their farm system. JA Happ will likely be the second most sought after starting pitcher behind Cole Hamels, as a consistent left handed arm. Yangervis Solarte is a versatile defender that can play anywhere in the infield, with an ok bat that’s had more pop in it this year than in years past (31 extra base hits). Justin Smoak and Curtis Granderson are two left handed, power bats that are going to be free agents at the end of the year, so the team will likely try to get whatever they can for the two rental pieces.

*All stats as of 6/23 via fangraphs.com and baseball-reference.com and this time milb.com