One Number to Watch for Every Jays Pitcher

On Tuesday, I identified one number to watch for every hitter getting regular playing time for the Jays. Today, I want to follow up with info on the pitching staff. Stats were current as of Tuesday night.

• Jose Berrios: 46.7% Hard Hit Rate. Berrios has a 2.98 ERA so far this season, but there are underlying signs that something is off. The biggest flashing red light is that almost half the contact off him has been over 95mph, the third worst rate among qualified starters. He’s throwing about as hard as usual, with about the same pitch mix, so it may be a blip, but there’s a risk that his shiny surface stats are a mirage.
• Yusei Kikuchi: 4.8% BB rate. Who doesn’t seem to be a mirage is Yusei Kikuchi. Surface and underlying stats all suggest he really has turned into a top 5-ish starter in the American League. He’s always had monster stuff, but this year he’s throwing it in the zone more (45%, about 3 percentage points above average) and just trusting that batters can’t hit it. He’s mostly been right.
• Chris Bassitt: 9.2% Barrel Rate. Bassitt has made his living as a weak contact specialist, with an ERA four tenths of a run below his FIP for his career. This year, however, his barrel rate is way up from his norm (6.6% career). A solid start last night has already helped start to bring this back into line, which is good because he doesn’t have the raw stuff to make his living on strikeouts.
• Kevin Gausman: 22.6% Strikeout Rate. Gausman is supposed to make his living off strikeouts, so it’s concerning that he’s slipped from an elite 31% rate last year to below league average. The inverse of Bassitt, he’s always tended to get hit pretty hard, so he needs to get his own outs. The good news is that this seems mostly to be an artifact of his velocity dip in April, and his May K rate is most of the way back to his recent dominant levels.
• Alek Manoah: 93.5mph Average Fastball Velocity. That’s right back in line with his 2021/2 number. It’s not just the speed itself, it’s what it represents. The new, leaner Manoah seems to have re-discovered his feel, hitting his spots again and getting the good life on the fastballs and the good snap on the slider. He might never post a 2.24 ERA again, not many guys do, but he’s back to looking like the workhorse #2/3 in a playoff rotation that Jays fans were getting used to.
• Yariel Rodriguez: 95.4mph Average Fastball Velocity. I hate to repeat numbers in this column, it’s more fund to dig up something new for each player, but for a few guys this year it really is the main story. The whole question with Rodriguez was whether the huge uptick in stuff he saw in 2022 when he moved to the bullpen could survive the transition back to the rotation. In the starts we saw, it looked like the answer was yes, but then he did get hurt so I suppose the jury’s still out.
• Bowden Francis: 30.8% Home Run per Fly Ball Rate. Francis has a tendency to get hit hard, but no qualified pitcher has had this rate reach 23% in a full season in the past decade. Which is to say that while the results have not been good for him so far, better luck is on the way and his solid 25% K rate should augur solid future results.
• Trevor Richards: 64% Change Ups Thrown. That’s the third highest rate in a season of at least 20 innings in the data. Like Devin Williams, the pitcher right above him, Richards’ cambio is more like a screwball than a traditional straight change, beating hitters with movement more than deception. It’s had an odd effect on his profile. Batters are making contact a lot more (76%, up from ~66% in recent seasons), but squaring him up less often (32% hard hit rate, down 5 percentage points from last year and more than that from prior years). The unorthodox strategy has worked so far and he’s been a rare bright spot in the ‘pen.
• Yimi Garcia: 14.4 Inches of Drop on his Fastball. Speaking of bright spots. Yimi is throwing harder and with about an inch and a half more carry on the fastball this season, which has elevated his swinging strike rate and therefore strikeout rate to career highs. The 0.47 ERA won’t hold, but a number starting with a 2 from here on out seems plausible and would still work just fine.
• Tim Mayza: 92.1mph Average Fastball Velocity. The third of our trio of fastball velocity pitchers, and the only one with bad news. Mayza is off almost a mile and a half from last year, which is a big problem for a guy who throws his sinker 70-80% of the time when he’s on. Mayza celebrates his 11th year in the Jays organization on June 8th, edging Danny Jansen by about two hours for the longest tenure in the org, and hopefully a return to form in the second half will prevent it from being his last.
• Jordan Romano: 8.3% Swing and Miss Rate on his Fastball. Down from a career norm of 32%. This one’s weird. The pitch still sits 97 with huge extension that means it gets on top of hitters even faster than most 97mph gas, it still has plus vertical ride, and his slider looks the same as always and is getting the same results. He’s missing down in the zone more in 2024, but that doesn’t seem to explain this degree of trouble. My money’s on blip, for now.
• Erik Swanson: 48% First Pitch Strike Rate. That’s down 13 percentage points from his personal average (and from the league). Falling behind is bad for any pitcher, but especially for a guy like Swanson who’s heavily dependent on getting batters to chase his splitter. He’s drawing way fewer swings outside the zone this year, and consequently his K rate has been roughly cut in half.
• Zach Pop: 50% Ground Ball Rate. That’s up from 40% last year but below the elite 58% range where he was when he first came to the Jays. Pop lives off generating ground ball outs, so this is a step forward, but he still has work to do.
• Chad Green: 7.2 IP. Green turns 33 tomorrow and is missing significant time for the third season in a row (granted, the last two were because of the same injury). He’s only ever been good when he’s on the mound, but his ability to get out there is becoming a bit of a concern.
• Nate Pearson: 22% Chase Rate. That’s in line with his 21% over the past four seasons, and it’s the 5th lowest among 710 pitchers who have accumulated 50 innings in that time. Nate has great stuff, with 98mph heat and two breaking balls that are plus by their movement profiles, but hitters just don’t bite for some reason, and it’s prevented him from racking up the Ks while leading to long PAs and too many walks.
• Isiah Kiner-Falefa: 2.0 IP. Too many.