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The Toronto Blue Jays are on a hot stretch, with their bats coming alive and exploding to carry the team to a bunch of wins which further thinned down the gap between them and the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East division. There is still plenty of baseball left to play this September, and with the Yankees shockingly melting down like ice cream under the desert sun and the Rays not that far in front of them, the Blue Jays could end up stunning the rest of the majors by winning the division. It will take an all-hands-on-deck approach for the Blue Jays to pull off a remarkable feat like that, and that also means needing Jose Berrios to step up.
Jose Berrios
Before taking a dive on Jose Berrios, let's take a step back first and see the bigger picture of the Blue Jays' starting rotation. Toronto's pitching staff, particularly its starters, does not have mind-blowing numbers on the surface. Blue Jays starters only have a collective ERA of 4.00, so far this season, which barely cracks the top 20 in the big leagues. However, they are a top-10 group in terms of FIP with a 3.77 output in that area and 10th overall in fWAR (11.4).
The Blue Jays are getting good returns from their $110 million investment in Kevin Gausman, who's got an 11-9 record and a 5.3 fWAR. Alex Manoah is 13-7 with a 2.48 ERA and .256 BABIP, both the best numbers among qualified Blue Jays starters so far this season. After a slow start to the season, Ross Stripling has seemingly gotten it together, as evidenced by his 1.59 ERA in June and a 1.96 ERA in August. All three of those guys have fWAR of at least 2.5, which at the moment, Jose Berrios could only wish he has something remotely close to that. As of this writing, Berrios owns a 0.6 fWAR. Of all qualified starters in the MLB, Berrios' ERA of 5.23 is the second-highest.
Isolating the worst 10 on that list, Berrios is only one of two pitchers who have managed to win at least 10 games despite being the worst in that that group in terms of FIP and fWAR. That sounds like a bit nitpicking, but it really does paint a clear story of how much Toronto needs Berrios to hold up the end of his bargain and not just let his team's bats from doing the heavy lifting.
Saving Berrios and company plenty of times this season has been the team's robust hitting, as Berrios and the rest of Toronto's starters are getting 5.24 runs behind them per nine innings. That's third-highest in the MLB, with only the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros owning better numbers. Berrios is actually the beneficiary of the second-fattest run support among qualified Toronto starters this year with 5.97, which is largely why he’s been able to take minimal losses through his first 27 starts. Berrios has had no-decisions in games where he gave up four and five earned runs in fewer than six innings during different games just last August alone. That month, he went 1-1 with a dizzying 6.92 ERA.
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Jose Berrios is getting hurt this season by his inability to suppress contact that leads to batted balls in play. In fact, he is (again) among the worst among qualified starters in the MLB in that area with a .368 BABIP. And when opposing hitters aren't doing that, they are taking advantage of Berrios' extreme susceptibility to giving up the long ball, as he happens to have the highest home runs given up per nine innings in the same group with 1.72. Opposing hitters are consistently finding the sweet spot on their bats when facing Berrios, whose 10.9 barrel percentage is. you guessed it, the highest rate across the majors.
It is not too late for Jose Berrios to improve his ways and be a bigger factor for the Blue Jays. And if he is to get himself out of the slump, he would have to start throwing strikeouts. His 20.3 strikeout rate so far this year is the lowest in his career since he posted a 17.4 K% in his first season in the MLB back in 2016. Last season, he was at 26.1 K%. The velocity of his four-seam fastballs has gone from 94.1 in 2021 to 93.9 in 2022, but that's barely something to alarm him. What's way more frustrating is the fact that the weighted value of his four-seamers has plunged from -0.3 in 2021 to -19.0 this year. Ouch.
The Blue Jays still believe in Berrios, and they will have to. Hopefully for them, the heat of their scorching form will rub off on him and translate to better pitching from the 28-year-old righty.
