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Blue Jays mid-term report card: Alejandro Kirk

By Tom Dakers
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Toronto Blue Jays v Baltimore Orioles Photo by G Fiume/Getty Images

Back from my MS Ride weekend. It went about as well as it could have. Almost perfect weather. The wind was at our backs most of the time. It was a reminder that I need to work on hill climbing. I made it up all the hills, but rather slowly. But the rest of it went well and faster than I’ve done it in the past.

And surprisingly, I’m not stiff at all today. I think the stiffness is to come.

We are quickly approaching mid-season, so it is time we started our mid-season report cards.

Let’s start with Alejandro Kirk.

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+ TB GDP
2023 24 59 202 178 14 45 5 0 3 21 0 0 20 23 .253 .337 .331 .668 90 59 9
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/26/2023.

The weird stat is that 8.8% of his hits have been infield hits. Last year it was 6.7%, which I thought was unsustainable.

His wRC+ is 91. I expect that to improve as the season goes on.

BR has him at a 0.7 WAR. FanGraphs at 0.6.

Last year he started slowly and built up the numbers as time passed. This year?

  • April: .805 OPS
  • May: .564 OPS
  • June: .624 OPS

He isn’t hitting the ball as hard as last year. 23.7% hard-hit rate, 37.5 last year. His line drive rate is up a bit, 21.8% from 19.2.

Defensively? Last year he was near the top of the league in framing stats. This year, he’s 10th of 60 catchers rated.

And, as we all know, he’s slow. FanGraphs has him at -3.9 runs on the basepaths (6th worst in baseball). That’s not going to improve.

He’s been a bit below average in throwing out base stealers, 17% this year, 26%. Of course, the league average has dropped too, 22% this year and 25% last year.

Catching ERA is one of those stats involving many factors, but Jays' pitchers have a 3.77 ERA when Kirk is catching, 4.27 when Jansen catches (3.57 in the few games Heineman has caught).

To me, his defense looks fine. Coming up to the majors, we thought he would be a bat-first catcher, but his defense has been better than I expected. Unfortunately, his bat hasn’t been as good as expected this year.

He’s still just 24.

Poll

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

This poll is closed

  • 1%
    A
    (9 votes)
  • 3%
    B+
    (21 votes)
  • 12%
    B
    (83 votes)
  • 24%
    B-
    (166 votes)
  • 20%
    C+
    (136 votes)
  • 18%
    C
    (126 votes)
  • 11%
    C-
    (76 votes)
  • 3%
    D+
    (24 votes)
  • 1%
    D
    (13 votes)
  • 0%
    D-
    (2 votes)
  • 1%
    F
    (10 votes)
666 votes total Vote Now

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