In defence of the Blue Jays’ subpar start to the season

Prior to Opening Day, it was easy to point out some soft pockets in the Blue Jays’ schedule against less imposing teams from the AL Central like the Kansas City Royals, Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Guardians, and even the Minnesota Twins. This year, there aren’t two or three doormats in that division to beat up on anymore.

To date, every one of those teams has exceeded expectations, save for the Chicago White Sox in the Central. Even Toronto’s six games against the nearly .500 Oakland Athletics this season suddenly don’t look like layups anymore. The Blue Jays’ remaining strength of schedule is no longer as favourable as it was to start the season.

In their 37 games this season, the Blue Jays have only faced one truly “bad” team when it comes to their talent level: the Colorado Rockies. And aside from six games later this month against the White Sox, there aren’t any other soft series in Toronto’s schedule heading into July.

The Blue Jays have played only six games against teams with records under .500, around 16% of their total schedule. So 84% of their games have been against teams with winning records this year. Meanwhile, they’re almost even with a 14-17 record against teams with records above .500.

To put that in perspective, only the Astros have played fewer games this year (14%) against bad teams than the Blue Jays. It’s the Astros, Blue Jays and White Sox ranked as 1-2-3 in the “Sorry, no layups for you” to start the season competition.

Power Rankings Guru has the Blue Jays with the third-toughest remaining schedule, while FanGraphs has the Blue Jays with the sixth-toughest schedule for the rest of the season. Quality of opponent-wise, it hasn’t been easy for the Jays thus far, and it won’t get any easier down the stretch.

Win-loss records will swing over the next few months, but Toronto’s next 60 games leading into the All-Star break include 22 games against teams currently with a losing record. If ever there was an opportunity for the Blue Jays to gain some ground, this is it.

Chris Black also posited this a few weeks ago: The quality of pitching faced by the Blue Jays has also been one of the toughest in MLB. Thomas Nesitco confirmed this with his tjStuff+ metric.

When teams like the Blue Jays are struggling to score runs, it’s especially difficult to gain any kind of traction against elite pitching. Not that I’m making an excuse for the Blue Jays for their ineptitude at the plate, it’s just an observation so far.

Another interesting thing to note, Blue Jays batters have faced the second-highest percentage of high velocity pitches in MLB this year. 19.6% of pitches to batters have been 95MPH or higher, second only to the Arizona Diamondbacks’ 21.5% of high velocity pitches.

The Blue Jays also rank fourth last in baseball with BABIP, currently sitting at .265. And they have the fifth biggest difference between batting average and expected batting average at -.20. Digging into the expected stats, it’s easy to see why some feel like the Blue Jays will eventually snap out of this.

Maybe that’s why just over a week ago, John Schneider didn’t seem all too concerned about the lack of production at the plate when he said: “It’s May 1st, it will come, we will be better.”

Some of the underlying metrics may not hint at a breakout for certain players, but it’s certainly a factor when analyzing the team’s overall lack of production at the plate.

This may sound like one long overly-optimistic rationalization for a 17-20 record by the Blue Jays, but they need to beat the good teams and they need to punish the bad teams. They can’t control who they face, the quality of pitching or the calibre of team they match up against.

All the Blue Jays can control is their quality of play, regardless of who steps in against them.