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Blue Jays mid-term report card: Alejandro Kirk

By Tom Dakers
/ new
Boston Red Sox at Toronto Blue Jays Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images

We are hitting the mid-point of the season tonight, so it is time we did our mid-season report cards.

Let’s start with an easy one. Alejandro Kirk is having a terrific season. He’s played in 70 of our 80 games (and still when he sits one out, we complain bitterly).

Here is his batting line:

Standard Batting
Year Age G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ GDP HBP
2022 23 70 255 218 40 69 12 0 10 32 0 0 31 24 .317 .408 .509 .917 160 6 4
3 Yr 3 Yr 139 469 407 63 118 22 0 19 59 0 0 51 50 .290 .375 .484 .859 138 13 7
162 162 162 547 474 73 138 26 0 22 69 0 0 59 58 .290 .375 .484 .859 138 15 8
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/4/2022.

If you go to FanGraphs, you can see that 9.2% of his hits are infield hit, which is amazing/unsustainable. But it adds to the fun of his season.

He seems to be getting more confident by the day. His OPS by month:

April: .584

May: .984

June: 1.086

Defensively? He’s looked fine to me. His framing stats put him fifth in baseball (and everyone above him has caught more innings).

Alejandro’s thrown out 27% of base stealers (the league average is 24%). He hasn’t had a passed ball credited against him yet and there have been 8 wild pitches when he’s been catching. And he’s made two errors.

Catching stats are weird, but then he looks good behind the plate. It seems that our pitchers like throwing to him. I think we can credit our minor and major league catcher coaches for doing a good job with him.

Kirk’s played 43 games behind the plate and 21 games at DH, as the team has been very careful with his workload. But he’s still 11th in the league games played at catcher.

Baseball Reference has him at a 3.2 WAR and FanGraphs has him at 3.0. Not bad for a half-season. He’s pretty much assured of a spot on the All-Star team.

Poll

For the first half, I’d give Alejandro Kirk an

This poll is closed

  • 92%
    A
    (737 votes)
  • 6%
    B+
    (55 votes)
  • 0%
    B
    (4 votes)
  • 0%
    B-
    (0 votes)
  • 0%
    C+
    (3 votes)
  • 0%
    C
    (0 votes)
  • 0%
    C-
    (0 votes)
  • 0%
    D+
    (0 votes)
  • 0%
    D
    (1 vote)
  • 0%
    D-
    (0 votes)
  • 0%
    F
    (1 vote)
801 votes total Vote Now

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