The 2023 season was something of a disappointment in Toronto, as the club once again was swept out of the AL Wild Card series after a third place finish in the AL East. As the club spent 2023 treading water, several key players such as star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (whose struggles MLBTR’s Mark Polishuk discussed last month), catcher Alejandro Kirk, and veteran outfielder George Springer all took significant steps back this year. Meanwhile, the pitching side of the roster faced its own challenges. Right-hander Ross Stripling departed via free agency last offseason for San Francisco and while veteran right-hander Chris Bassitt was a capable replacement this year, 2022 AL Cy Young finalist Alek Manoah was not replaced so easily. Manoah, 25, posted a disastrous 2023 season that saw him sport a 5.87 ERA and 6.02 FIP across 19 starts.
With all the shortcomings of the 2023 squad in Toronto, it might seem somewhat surprising that the club managed to post essentially the same season as they did last year. Fortunately, the Blue Jays managed to turn their starting rotation into a considerable strength this year, even as their best arm from last season was pulled from the starting five due to ineffectiveness. While a solid, 11-start return from veteran lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu and a typically excellent campaign from ace righty Kevin Gausman both were major assets, the steps forward taken by right-hander Jose Berrios and left-hander Yusei Kikuchi did the most to return Toronto to contention in 2023, and provide reason for optimism when looking ahead to 2024.
Both pitchers had their first full seasons in Toronto in 2022: Berrios was acquired at the 2021 trade deadline, while the club signed Kikuchi to a three-year deal in free agency ahead of the 2022 campaign. That season was a difficult one for both players, as each posted an ERA north of 5.00 and the worst full-season fWAR totals of their careers. With Kikuchi under contract for another two seasons and Berrios signed on through 2028, both signings were looking nothing short of disastrous for the Blue Jays after their first year.
Fortunately, however, both pitchers were able to turn things around in 2023, allowing Toronto to absorb the loss of Manoah’s elite production much more easily. Berrios saw his 5.23 ERA in 172 innings last year drop to a much more palatable 3.65 figure in 189 1/3 frames. While he was 26% worse than league average last year by measure of ERA+, he managed to post a season that was actually 16% better than league average by that same metric this season. Kikuchi, meanwhile, saw nearly as drastic an improvement as his similar 5.19 ERA (74 ERA+) improved to a far more respectable 3.86 (110 ERA+) figure. What’s more, after making 12 of his 32 appearances out of the bullpen in 2022, Kikuchi made 32 starts in 2023, allowing his innings total to skyrocket from 100 2/3 to 167 2/3.
As good as those seasons were, of course, they weren’t enough to get the Jays over the hump in 2023. Looking ahead to 2024, the question for GM Ross Atkins and the rest of the front office is a simple one: Just how sustainable were the improvements for their mid-rotation arms? Fortunately for the fans in Toronto, the improvement both players found in 2023 is largely backed up by more advanced metrics.
After striking out just 19.8% of batters faced in 2022, Berrios improved that figure to 23.5% this year while maintaining a low 6.6% walk rate. Both of those numbers are slightly better than his career averages of 23.2% and 7.1%, respectively, which helps lend credence to the idea that Berrios’s return to form could be sustainable. Berrios saw improvements in other areas, too, as his BABIP dropped from .328 in 2022 to just .289 in 2023, while his strand rate rose from 70.9% to 76.4%.
BABIP and strand rate are both typically regarded as fluky year-to-year stats, giving them little value when predicting future performance in such small sample sizes. In this case, however, they back up that Berrios’s 2022 campaign during which he led the league in both earned runs and hits allowed may have simply been an outlier: Berrios’s 2023 BABIP is almost identical to his career .290 mark entering the 2022 campaign. What’s more, advanced metrics such as SIERA indicate that not only were Berrios’s 2022 and 2023 seasons similar to each other in terms of underlying performance, but they were similar to his body of work throughout his entire career. Berrios posting a 4.13 SIERA in 2022 and a 4.08 SIERA this season. While the 2023 figure is a few points better, both are in the same ballpark as his 4.04 SIERA in seven seasons since becoming a major league regular.
While Berrios’s 2023 campaign indicates that 2022 was merely an aberration in what has otherwise been a consistent career as a mid-rotation arm, Kikuchi’s season this year seems to indicate a significant step forward. Among 140 pitchers with at least 100 innings of work in the majors during 2022, Kikuchi’s 5.62 FIP ranked in the bottom three, only better than Jonathan Heasley and Josiah Gray. While Kikuchi struck out an impressive 27.3% of batters faced, he walked a whopping 12.8% of batters faced. What’s worse, those free baserunners Kikuchi offered opposing teams often found themselves scoring on home runs thanks to Kikuchi’s fly balls leaving the year for home runs at an astronomical 23.7% rate that was by far the highest in the majors.
Fortunately, Kikuchi’s command and control issues improved considerably this year, even as his strikeout rate ticked down slightly to 25.9%. He nearly halved his walk rate in 2023, cutting his free passes down to a 6.9% rate that was actually in the 73rd percentile among all qualified pitchers, per Statcast. Kikuchi also managed to make improvements regarding the long ball, though they weren’t as drastic as his cut down on walks. After putting up the league’s worst barrel rate of 14.8% in 2022, Kikuchi managed to cut that figure to 9% this season, good for the 29th percentile among all qualified major leaguers.
While that’s still below average, Kikuchi’s more reasonable 15.3% home run rate allowed him to post a career year in 2023; this year was the first time the 32-year-old managed to post an above average season by both ERA- (8% better than league average) and FIP- (4% better than league average). SIERA, meanwhile, was actually even more bullish on Kikuchi than Berrios this year, as the lefty posted a 3.86 figure that put him in the same range as quality arms like Logan Gilbert and Sonny Gray while outperforming the likes of Corbin Burnes and Blake Snell.
With Berrios once again looking like the quality mid-rotation arm he appeared to be throughout his career in Minnesota and Kikuchi having joined him at a similar status in 2023, the Blue Jays look to be extremely well set up headed into 2024 with a front four of Gausman, Berrios, Kikuchi, and Bassitt in the starting rotation. That should allow them to be aggressive in looking to revamp the club’s offense as they attempt to return to the postseason in 2024 and win their first playoff game since 2016.
I don’t think we’re headed back to the days where ERAs of 3.30 or lower were commonplace among starters. Of the 127 pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched this year, Berrios’ 3.65 ranks 38th. Not the kind of guy you’d prefer to be your best pitcher, but certainly a very solid #2. The Blue Jays forked over quite a bit for Berrios, but he was certainly worth his $18MM this year. That’s a little better than mid rotation, IMHO, but splitting hairs really.
Not sure why you used 100 innings as a baseline, but among all qualified starting pitchers in the AL Jose Berrios ranked 10th in ERA (his teammates Gausman and Bassitt coming at 4th and 9th respectively).
I think just about any team would take that performance especially for $18MM a year.
I used 100 innings to get to over 120 pitchers and avoid relievers. There are only 44 qualified starters in MLB this past season. It doesn’t give a real good perspective on how Berrios ranks against his peers.
It really does though because being able to take the ball every 5th day is something that’s becoming more and more rare, hence being able to make +30 starts on a year in year out basis is more valuable than ever.
@ martras
He is the number two. Gausman is the ace.
Bassitt is better than Berrios
The concerning thing for the Jays should be the fact that all of their productive pitchers had to be acquired via free agency or trade. This in spite of the fact that Pete Walker has a reputation as a pitching guru. Where are the homegrown arms?
The Manoah saga plays a part here, I understand. But he looks like another example of a young player who isn’t held to professional standards in terms of conditioning and preparation. Is this lax approach affecting the entire minor league system?
They don’t have good scouting which means they aren’t adding a lot of great talent to the system, and the development isn’t good enough to overcome the talent issue.
It’s a problem
Walker doesn’t draft the pitchers. He only fixes the broken ones — if they listen.
Right, but he should be the one directing the way that minor league coaches develop/teach pitchers. Not all pitching coaches get involved in that aspect or get the chance to get involved in that aspect. But they should. The organizational pitching philosophy should be consistent from top to bottom.
It would be nice if the Jays could draft stellar prospects every year but they aren’t always available when the first pick is at 18 or 20. Not too much of a concern if they can identify good solid consistent pitchers to sign or trade for which they seemed to have done. Jays have the dollars available for that which is a bonus as not every team has that, it’s just important to try to make sure there isn’t too many bad contracts. Jays would be sunk if they where carrying Stanton’s contract around their necks.
DonOsbourne, I think there are two parts to this. One is that the Blue Jays have not had much in the way of draft bonus pool money at all over the past half decade or so. I added up the bonus pools of the Orioles and Jays since they met in the wildcard game in ‘16 and the Orioles have had something in the range of two and a half to three time as much to spend in the draft as the Jays. Toronto only held a top 10 draft position once and that was in the shortened underscouted 2020 draft. So they haven’t had the same flexibility in the draft as teams that get extra picks and bonus pool room to move around and make a lot of upside plays or get top tier talent. Coupled with being in contention from ‘20 onward and they’ve traded from the farm to supplement the big league team.
But the other end of it is maybe a shift in philosophy at some point that coincided with a lot of their player development infrastructure investments. It seems that at that point, they had a gap in the upper minors with what they liked/trusted and went externally to tap into upside of previously ineffective major leaguers like Ray and Matz at the same time as mirroring that in the draft/minors with the stuff gains they got out of guys like Tiedemann. That gap is starting to close with a few of those types starting to make it to the upper minors. So it’ll be intriguing to see what starts to come of it. I don’t think there is as much disconnect as you suggest. The philosophy just needs time to percolate upwards to fill the gap.
Though I have to say that their offensive philosophy/values don’t seem to align when you look at their farm compared to major league moves.
@SweetLou – I am aware.
Hard to get excited for 2024 knowing the 2 Clowns are still here. Zero confidence in shapiro and his carry on baggage atkins ….They’ll screw this team up again ….
Lots of data on their incompetence. Analytics indicate they need to be pulled in favour of a front office team that understands how to win. It will be interesting to see how many free agents avoid Toronto based on the last two years of shenanigans. Yankees and RedSox will be better next year too.
Neither of these guys are free agents this offseason and clearly neither are trade candidates. There is no reason for a transaction-based news site to be writing opinion pieces about them.
Don’t read it then. ♂️
Now do two starters the Blue Jays handed Arizona because people with no feel for the game decided it was a good idea to trade a top 3 prospect in baseball for a defensive OF with a mediocre bat because you had a catchers with much lower upside on the roster
Lol I like gabby a lot but by they way people talk to about it you would think the jays traded buster posey.
Not defensively but offensive upside is insane with him
You might want to let an editor read your comments before you post.
That was undoubtedly a bad trade for the Jays. I’m not as down on Shapiro/Atkins as some are, but that was one of the worst moves of their tenure for sure.
The trade is not as bad as it seems. 1.7 fWar for Moreno plus 2.1 fWar for Lourdes vs. 2.1 fWar for Varsho. Both teams got what they needed. Great trade. Gabe looks like he will not have very much power but contact is very nice. The trade will look better after next year. Lourdes was just a distraction with the jays and he played with a chip on his shoulder this year that he wouldn’t have had if he stayed with the Jays. Same with Teo.
Now explain what your fWAR means. We went over how it is not a useful stat days ago. Varsho was a replaceable, glorified 4th outfielder whose WAR gets inflated by a questionable defensive metric. To say “the trade is not as bad as it seems” seems to imply you aren’t paying attention to the action in the field. It was one of the worst trades of the last 5-10 years.
its_hindsight Not my fault if you don’t understand basic arithmetic or understand the basics of baseball. Your ” homerun good , stolen base or diving catch bad ” approach is very old. There is more to baseball then that but I don’t have the time to teach you. Carry on trolling.
You can’t explain something, don’t bother making an argument for it.
I never said anything about “homerun good, stolen base or diving catch bad”. Horrible take.
You cannot explain fWAR because it’s a fake argument with no substance. Come with real facts or get off this site. Embarrassing.
Bullred, I don’t think it’s fair to say that someone doesn’t understand the basic arithmetic and therefore their argument doesn’t hold water. I’m with it’s_happening in not trusting WAR numbers where the majority of it comes from defensive metrics. I trust that people from BIS and from Statcast understand basic arithmetic, or rather advanced mathematics much better than me. But why is it then that so often they disagree on whether or not a player is a good defender? BIS thinks Varsho is a good left fielder while Statcast thinks he’s meh. Moreover, even if they agree, defensive metrics aren’t stable or very predictive. I look at Varsho’s consistent xwOBAs hovering around or even below .300 year over year and every year that goes by without him tapping into the upside, the more that xwOBA seems to be stabilizing. So if that’s all there is in the bat, that was a hefty price to pay for strictly outfield defense. Open market value on that isn’t all that much.
Plus if you want to bring math into the equation, you’d have to acknowledge the financial aspect of it as well. The value proposition skews towards the first few years of the deal. In year one, Arizona got way more value. Going forward, Arizona gets two more pre-arbitration years of Moreno while Varsho is going through his second (at around $5.5m) and third years of arbitration. Moreno’s first arb year will be Varsho’s fourth and if Varsho settles in as this type of player is a non tender candidate by then. Some course correction needs to happen for this to look anywhere near as palatable as you are suggesting.
Defensive metric within WAR is definitely a problem and has been that was for years. Completely throws off the category.
Further your point, what if Zona decides to QO Gurriel? It is possible, albeit perhaps a long shot. That could lead to another season or a draft pick.
All of the metrics are flawed even xwOBAs. DRS and UZR are both flawed as well but they are still representative of a way of looking at how well a player performed overall and very useful. Fangraphs uses UZR which doesn’t take into effect some of the great defensive plays that Varsho made. BR uses DRS which does look at more of the great plays that Varsho made like bringing back homers or plays off the wall. URZ considers anything off the wall as dead or not catchable but they haven’t met Daulton.
You forgot Varsho missing balls in the sun costing the Jays runs. Nobody remembers Varsho jumping over walls to make catches. I do remember the hundreds of bad at bats and realizing he’s nowhere close to the return of Gurriel and Moreno.
Stop justifying the trade. It set the Jays back.
The Jays don’t have a player problem, they have a player performance problem. They just seem to be a hot and cold team, that is not winning when it counts. On paper they are as good as most teams, but the game isn’t played on paper.
Apparently played on somebody’s computer. Maybe this year they will upgrade from the TRS80….
One of the challenges is the way things progressed from 2020 onward. In 2020 the Jays apparently had a strong farm system. Slowly, the Jays gave up parts. Gave up little parts for no reason in 2020. Gave up parts in 2021 and missed the postseason. Suddenly they run out of money with signings of Ryu, Springer, Berrios extension, Gausman, and acquiring players in arbitration.
The point is Jays fans, especially the ones justifying the Moreno trade, said the Jays were in good shape and to trust the process. Now the process is at a point where Toronto must strongly consider trading their #1 prospect for a position player (3B, OF) to be a viable contender. We are past the point of trusting the process. It’s time for results or clean house.
its_hindsight
Nobody is talking about trading their number one prospect. Only you. Your so delusional it’s scary.
You’ve justified a bad trade. So you’d be lying to me and to yourself. Much like using WAR as a strong baseball argument.
Two sentences that include “nothing short of disastrous” are very fitting for this Deeds piece, which is another absolute travesty. Can’t you think of another phrase if you INSIST on repeating yourself?
Then he screws up “meanwhile” twice. It can’t come in the middle of the sentence. It HAS to start the sentence. Figure it out, you hack.
And “too” should never have a comma before it. This is never necessary. We did away with that archaic rule years ago.
They need to do away with this kid like they did away with Steve Adams.
Oct.31/23………shapiro and HIS CARRY ON BAGGAGE atkins HAVE DONE SWEET EFF ALL SO FAR !!!
PLEASE ROGERS GET RID OF THESE 2 CLOWNS !!!!