TORONTO – If you’re looking for a scapegoat, Edwin Jackson’s an easy candidate.
His five starts this year have been … rough. Case in point, his most recent outing in Thursday night’s 6-2 loss to the New York Yankees. By allowing six runs (two earned) over 3.1 innings, Jackson actually lowered his ERA from 13.22 to 11.90, but he’s not fooling big-league hitters right now.
"The story’s been too repetitive," he said afterward. "I’ve had numerous, numerous opportunities to come out and get the job done and I’m not finding a way to make pitches in big situations."
Whether he gets the chance to start a sixth game for Toronto remains unclear as manager Charlie Montoyo indicated the Blue Jays are still working through their options.
"The only thing you can do is continue to pitch," Jackson added. "I flat-out just haven’t been getting it done. I’ve never been one to make excuses. I’ve always been one to man up and tell it how it is, and that’s just how it is right now. I’m not getting the job done."
Clearly, the Blue Jays’ rotation needs answers, and ideally they emerge soon. Otherwise, this team risks more lopsided games while taxing the bullpen heavily.
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With all of that said, the pitching staff has still outperformed the lineup to this point in the season thanks to Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez, Trent Thornton and a solid bullpen. In other words, as badly as the Blue Jays need steady pitching, the offence has actually been worse.
Look up and down the Blue Jays’ roster and you don’t see many players overperforming their expected numbers. You’ve got Eric Sogard, who’s hitting .290 with an .846 OPS after going two for four with a homer and s double Thursday. No one was counting on that.
Justin Smoak’s .829 OPS looks about right, as does Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s .790 mark. Beyond that, you have a long list of underperforming hitters including everyone from Danny Jansen to Brandon Drury to Cavan Biggio. Even Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hasn’t played to his full potential yet.
Based on publicly available quality of contact data, those four hitters aren’t the only ones. By comparing batted ball trajectories to real life results, Baseball Savant shows which hitters have been most and least fortunate in 2019.
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Sogard, for example, has been a little lucky. So has Freddy Galvis. But the list of players underperforming includes Jansen, Luke Maile, Drury, Biggio, Guerrero Jr., Rowdy Tellez and Teoscar Hernandez.
Under those circumstances, you’d expect some increase in offence from this group even if they keep making the same calibre of contact from here on. Eventually, more of those hard-hit balls should land for hits. And if they start driving the ball more often, that would lead to further gains from a lineup that now ranks 27th in baseball in runs scored.
"Absolutely," Sogard said. "There’s continual ups and downs throughout a season and the goal is to get everyone on the same page at the same time and that’s when we’re going to win a lot of games, but guys are going to have ups and downs. Hopefully other guys can pick them up when they’re in ruts."
That’s not to say this group has simply been unlucky. Their plate approach has been poor for extended stretches, leading to at least two impromptu hitters’ meetings. You don’t need those if you’re barrelling everything.
But if you move beyond the frustration of a 23-39 start, there’s reason to believe this group will improve to some extent. There are young hitters to dream on and numbers suggesting better results are ahead.
"Grichuk’s been swinging it better the last couple of days," Montoyo said. "Teoscar’s looking good. Overall, the last three days we’ve looked a lot better at the plate for sure."
Of course, these Blue Jays had combined for the worst batting average in franchise history (.220), the second-worst on-base percentage (.288) and the third-worst OPS (.670) entering play Thursday. When look at it that way, there’s really nowhere to go but up.
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