3 Things To Improve All 30 Teams — The Toronto Blue Jays
The 2021 Blue Jays finished the season with a record of 91–71, good enough for 4th in the AL East. Finishing just behind the 2 AL Wild Card teams, the Red Sox and Yankees, the Blue Jays look to utilize their stacked lineup to propel them to a playoff spot and to contend for their first World Series title since 1993. Let’s see what 3 things we can find to help them do just that.
1. Keep New Ace Jose Berrios On The Field For 30+ Starts
The Toronto Blue Jays were graced by the presence of contract year Robbie Ray in 2021 and he took that motiviation all the way to an AL Cy Young award. Now off to Seattle, the Blue Jays have a new ace that they acquired at the trade deadline last season in Jose Berrios. Jose spent his first 5.5 years as a member of the Minnesota Twins where he had a career ERA of 4.08 with a 107 ERA+ over 781.1 innings and 135 starts.
After coming to Toronto, Jose pitched much better than he did as a Twin. In 12 starts with the Blue Jays, Berrios had an ERA of 3.58 with 78 strikouts and a 123 ERA+ over 70.1 innings. Jose is not much of a strikeout pitcher, 9.1 K/9 over his career, but he is a soft contact and control pitcher as he only gives up 1.1 HR/9 and 2.8 BB/9. The soft contact will play in Toronto with new 3B Matt Chapman, the best defensive 3B in baseball, manning the hot corner alongside Bo Bichette at SS. If Jose can put a whole season together like last year’s with the Blue Jays, he’d add 3 wins to their total.
2. Get A Full Season Out Of George Springer
32 year old George Springer is one of the most underrated and overlooked players in the game today. Over his 8 year career, he has a line of .269/.360/.497 with 196 homeruns and a 132 OPS+ over 3,909 plate apperances and 873 games. Coming off his first season with the Blue Jays in which he hit .264/.352/.555 with 22 homeruns and a 143 OPS+, he is looking to build off of that success at the plate, and play more than just 78 games.
Debuting for the Houston Astros on April 16, 2014, George has had the opportunity to play in 1,180 games throughout his career. As mentioned above, he’s only played in 873 which comes to a games played rate of 73.98% or 120 games a season. The good news for the Blue Jays is that George can play a full season. He’s done in once before in 2016 when he played all 162 for the Astros.
Springer was on pace for 44+ homeruns in 2021 over a full season. Adding that kind of power to Vladdy Jr’s 48 homeruns and Matt Chapman’s 40+ homeruns would go a long way in getting the Blue Jays to October. Should Springer play a full season, he’d add 3 wins to their total.
3. Let Alek Manoah Cook
With the 11th pick of the 2019 draft, the Toronto Blue Jays selected right handed pitcher Alek Manoah. Quickly making his way to the Majors, he debuted for the Toronto Blue Jays on May 27, 2021. He made 20 starts last season and pitched 111.2 innings with a 3.22 ERA and 127 strikeouts and a 136 ERA+. This was good enough for him to finish 8th in the stacked AL RotY race.
This year will be Manoah’s first full season at the Major League level. Now at the age of 24, he will look to build off of his success in his rookie season and improve his control to get his league high HBP numbers down from 16 to, preferably, less than 10. If he can get his control issues figured out and he doesn’t have a sophomore slump, he would add 2 wins to the Blue Jays total.
A full season of Jose Berrios, a healthy season of George Springer, and Alek Manoah’s first full Major League season would add 8 wins to the Blue Jays total. This would give them a record of 99–63, still just barely off the AL East lead, but they would have the first Wild Card spot.
This has been the 29th entry in our series in which we take a look at all 30 teams individually and see what we can do to help them improve year over year. Previous entries include the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Atlanta Braves, the Baltimore Orioles, the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago White Sox, the Chicago Cubs, the Cincinnati Reds, the Cleveland Guardians, the Colorado Rockies, the Detroit Tigers, the Houston Astros, the Kansas City Royals, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles, the Miami Marlins, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Minnesota Twins, the New York Yankees, the New York Mets, the Oakland Athletics, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the San Francisco Giants, the San Diego Padres, the Seattle Mariners, the St Louis Cardinals, the Tampa Bay Rays, and the Texas Rangers. Follow me on Twitter @TroyBrock1993 for updates and other sports musings. Next up will be the Washington Nationals!
