Blue Jays first half letter grades
Pointlessly grading each Jays player's season so far as a way to take stock of where the team is at as they cross the halfway point of the schedule.
After coming out victorious in this week's three-game set against the San Francisco Giants, the Blue Jays find themselves with a 45-37 record for the season. I spent the whole evening calculating this and have discovered that said record also means that they've now played 82 games here in 2023, and some very high-up sources tell me that this means they've crossed the midway point of the year.
As such, it seems like an appropriate time to take stock of the performances we've seen from the team so far. You know, before we can all go ahead and memory hole these interminable last three months of listless baseball and Baltimore/Tampa success forever.
And, because a piece like this would be nothing without a gimmick, to do so I'm going to hand out some utterly meaningless letter grades as an excuse to discuss how each player's individual season is going.
So let's do it to it!
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INC
Mitch White
Unfortunately the Blue Jays have recently had to move White away from his ideal position, the injured list. They managed to keep him there for most of the first half, at least, which is the reason that I don’t think I can give him a grade just yet. So far he’s he's been OK for a couple of appearances after a rough start to the major league portion of his season, but it’s not a lot to go on. He could be fine, he could be a disaster, we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, we can at least hope that maybe Alex De Jesus will one day make the trade that brought White to Toronto last summer seem a little less lopsided than it does now.
F
Anthony Bass
Bass was better this year at using his social media platform to promote bigotry and generally just being a giant dumbass than he was at pitching, so the Jays — eventually, after embarrassingly trying everything that they possibly could to sweep it under the rug — cut bait on him. Later, loser!
Alek Manoah
I don't want to kick a guy when he's down, but obviously we have to do this. From third in AL Cy Young voting to -1.2 rWAR in 13 starts and sent down to Single-A to getting shelled for 11 runs in 2 2/3 innings by a lineup with an average age of 18.7 years old. What an unbelievable bummer.
D-
Adam Cimber
I'm giving Cimber this grade instead of an F just to separate him from the next level disasters that have been the Bass and Manoah experiences this season, but he could just as easily be right there with him. The injuries he's dealt with have surely had an impact here, but he and the training staff have deemed him good to go 22 times so far, and the results have been incredibly ugly. His 7.40 ERA is right in line with his 7.48 FIP, he's allowed more than two homers per nine innings, his walk rate nearly doubled from last season, and though he's never been a big strikeout guy, his K% has sunk from 20% to 13%. He's been a really important middle-inning reliever for this team the last couple of years, making it all especially tough to watch.
D
Santiago Espinal
I don't think anybody expected that the offensive output that propelled Espinal to an unlikely All-Star selection last season would continue, but an 80 wRC+ from a guy whose career mark coming into the year was 102 simply isn't good enough. More distressingly, though, have been his defensive numbers. The samples are tiny, so we can't take them too seriously, but at the position he's played the most, second base, he's at -3 by OAA, +1 by DRS, and not always passing the eye test either. Not awful, but not great if he's only going to hit like a glove-first guy. (Though it should be noted that his bat has been coming around of late, and hopefully that trend continues. Plus, he sure made a hell of a potentially game-saving play in the ninth inning on Thursday night!)
(Clip via Sportsnet/@Sportsnet)
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
The bar for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is obviously high, because 12 home runs and a 126 wRC+ certainly isn't nothing. But Vladdy being the ninth best offensive first baseman in baseball and the 40th ranked hitter overall is simply not good enough. (Starting to get the sense he’ll be alright though.)
Alejandro Kirk
We saw last season that Alejandro Kirk can be a very nice player — more than that, even — and I have to believe that’s still in there. But his calling card as a hitter has always been that he strikes the ball hard and is very difficult to strike out. When he's been healthy this season he's had one of those elements in his game, striking out just 11.4% of the time, but not the other. Kirk's average exit velocity has gone from being in the 78th percentile in 2022 to the 12th in 2023, his hard hit rate has gone from the 78th to the 17th, and his expected — and actual — stats have followed suit. I think it will improve, and it's been nice to see him become a very good defensive catcher — his framing and blocking both grade out as elite — but a 91 wRC+ isn't going to cut it for a guy who also cost his team more runs on the base paths last year than Albert Pujols and is on pace this year to be worse.
Daulton Varsho
If you had said at the start of the season the Jays' new left-handed-hitting outfielders would be even better than advertised on the defensive side of the ball, and that one would reach the midpoint of the season with a 115 wRC+ and the other would be at 89, you probably wouldn't have been all that disappointed. A 115 wRC+ for Varsho would have landed south of his pre-season projections, but ahead of where he was in 2022. Unfortunately for Ross Atkins, it turns out that Kevin Kiermaier has the 115, while Varsho sits at 89. He's finally had success against RHP here in June (118 wRC+) but not even to the level where he was at against them last year. Lourdes Gurriel Jr., at 1.2 fWAR, has been the more valuable player so far, and it's only the struggles of young Gabriel Moreno (68 wRC+, 0.0 fWAR) that have kept the grumbling about last winter's trade to a minimum.
D+
Cavan Biggio
Though he's actually been good for longer than he's been bad this season — since May 1st he's produced a 123 wRC+ in 88 plate appearances — his April was so putrid (17 wRC+ in 49 PA) that it's still dragging him down. His walk rate is starting to come back up, which is a good sign (if we're even worried about good signs from Biggio at this point), but overall it's been a replacement level first half that sees him sitting on an 85 wRC+.
C-
Yimi Garcia
It's a results-oriented business, otherwise Yimi would surely be graded higher. Garcia has a 5.18 ERA despite putting up a 3.88 FIP and 3.06 xFIP. His HR/FB rate has been pretty ugly, his strand rate is on the low side (as usual), but most crucially, I think, is his BABIP. Currently it stands at .389 BABIP, even though his expected stats are mostly not that horrific. I can't blame anyone for not exactly trusting him at this point, but everything under the hood suggests that he'll be fine.
Nate Pearson
Big Nate has looked really exciting at times, and the fact that he's been healthy enough to finally begin his MLB career in earnest is a huge development, but to this point he's been maddeningly inconsistent — and really struggled when asked to pitch on back-to-back days. The platform is there for him to take off in the second half, but he's been a little too homer-prone as yet, and the 4.44 ERA — though not a great number to measure relievers by — needs to come down.
George Springer
We all know that the aging curve is coming for the Blue Jays' 33-year-old leadoff hitter, but that doesn't mean I think a 112 wRC+ over the course of a half season is satisfactory. Fortunately, the way he got to that number has to make you feel a lot better than this grade does. Before this this season, Springer's worst month in a Blue Jays uniform was July of last year, when he produced just a 93 wRC+. He finished April with a mark of just 69. Since then? Back-to-back months at a much more Springer-like 135 wRC+. And a much nicer-looking Statcast page to boot.
C
Chris Bassitt
Bassitt was excellent against the Giants on Thursday, throwing six inning of shutout ball with twelve strikeouts and taking his ERA for the season down to a reasonably respectable 4.06. I could make the case for grading him a little higher here, and it was definitely great to see him get back on the right track after hitting a little bit of a skid since the end of May. But for a guy who was essentially brought in to be a number three in case José BerrÃos didn't rebound the way he has, 16 homers in 17 starts, a 4.82 FIP, and just a half a win by fWAR ultimately isn't quite what you want.
Danny Jansen
A league-average bat powered by a bunch of pulled home runs and little else? A catcher who seems to call a good game but is fairly average defensively otherwise? A stint on the IL? Yeah, it's been about par for the course from Jansen so far this season.
C+
Brandon Belt
What a difference a couple of months makes. There were genuine worries that Belt was washed back during his horrific first couple weeks of April. Fortunately, it turns out that his lack of spring training at-bats likely came from an overabundance of caution because of the offseason knee surgery he'd undergone, and that the Jays were willing to let him get his legs under him. A 49 wRC+ in April became a 171 mark in May and 147 in June. He's still striking out a ton, and his expected stats aren't measuring up to his outstanding 2021, but his exit velocities, hard hit rate, and barrel rate have significantly improved over the course of the season so far. His 125 wRC+ overall hasn't been as good as dreamed, but it's more than enough to have made him a valuable contributor. And if he keeps hitting like May and June, and doesn't have another April, it will end up being an outstanding season.
Yusei Kikuchi
It definitely feels as though Kikuch is pointed in the right direction at the moment, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here just yet. His 3.75 ERA is tasty, and I'm incredibly intrigued by the comfort he seems to have found in his curveball, but he's still allowing more than two home runs per nine innings, and we're only two starts removed from him essentially being a five-and-dive guy. That's some pretty incredible progress compared to where he was at last year, and I really want to be more bullish than this, but these are still nervy times with him.
Whit Merrifield
I made it pretty clear early on in the season that I'm not a big Whit guy and, well, I haven't exactly been vocal about that since then, have I? I could point out that he's benefitted from a .347 BABIP after posting a BABIP of just .295 over his previous 1,500 plate appearances (despite being a higher-BABIP guy earlier in his career), or that he's not really doing anything differently in terms of exit velo or expected stats than in his much worse previous years (90 wRC+ in 2021, 88 in 2022). But credit where its due. Balls have been dropping for hits (his wRC+ sits at 104), he's swiped 18 bags with a 75% success rate and been good on the bases otherwise (1.2 BsR), and his defensive versatility has been a plus. He also hasn't been so good that he can't sit down for a bit if Cavan Biggio continues to force his way back into the picture. He's not the guy he looked like last September or in April, obviously, but he's been a value add. He's fine.
Jordan Romano
There has been a bit of a shakiness from Romano this season that hasn't gone unnoticed among Jays fans. He's been very good, of course. He's racking up saves and strikeouts, avoiding free passes, and keeping the ball in the ballpark better than in every year of his career so far except 2022. But the ERA is a half a run higher than we're used to, he's not contributed as much in the way of win probability, and he's already recorded six meltdowns. That's more than he did in 2021, and just one behind his number from all of last year. His number of shutdown innings (15) isn't yet on last year's pace either (37). He's a very good closer and the Jays are lucky to have him, but it's just not quite felt like he's locked in yet.
B-
Matt Chapman
He may still be coasting on a sublime April and his otherworldly defence, but both of those things were so unbelievably good that it's hard to find too much fault with Chapman’s first half. His +7 DRS and +4 OAA have already surpassed his full year numbers from last year — +2 and +1 respectively — and his 219 wRC+ in the season's first month surely had him dreaming of a payday pushing $200 million or more when he reaches free agency in the fall. Things at the plate have gone considerably worse since — a 64 wRC+ May and an 84 mark in June have taken his wRC+ all the way down to 123, which is just six points higher than last year's total — but he seems to be improving and could still bring this grade up by season's end.
Erik Swanson
It's really impressive how little we've heard about Teoscar Hernández this season. Partly that's due to the way the former Blue Jays outfielder has struggled in Seattle, but some credit has to be given to Erik Swanson, who has been a really solid and reliable reliever working out of a bullpen that could use a couple more of those. I'm dinging him here because he hasn't been the guy that he was for the Mariners last year — his ERA is a run higher, his FIP is higher by nearly two runs, he's been far more homer prone, and his walk and strikeout rates are both down — but he set the bar so high then that all this means is that he’s still has been very, very good.
B
José BerrÃos
There was a little while there, after the Jays acquired BerrÃos from the Twins at the trade deadline in 2021, where it looked like he might have another gear. Over 12 starts with the Jays that season he put up a 10.0 K/9 and a 1.7 BB/9 — both of which would be career highs for him over a full season — and basically pitched at a five-win pace. Obviously whatever happened last year forced us to throw out those expectations. So, to see BerrÃos back looking like the very consistent, durable, comfortably above average guy that he'd been in Minnesota has been fantastic. His numbers look virtually identical to those days, long may it continue.
B+
Kevin Kiermaier
One of the Jays' signature offseason moves that I liked the least, Kiermaier has been truly outstanding in the first half. Yeah, he gets shielded from left-handed pitching, and he hasn't exactly been a picture of health, but he's been even better than expected in the field — his +14 DRS and +9 OAA in just 508 innings put him on pace to well exceed the +13 and +10 marks he produced in 2021, when he played 122 games and logged nearly 900 innings out there. Add in a sensational run of form at the plate that has pushed his wRC+ to 115 — a mark he hasn't been close to since putting up a 113 way back in 2017 — and there's no doubt that he's exceeded all expectations (and exceeded mine by a country mile).
Tim Mayza
It's hard for me to be too high on 28 innings of performance from a reliever who isn't striking a ton of guys out, especially when his strand rate seems is on the high side and he just happens to have yet to give up a home run. But Tim Mayza can only do what's asked of him, and so far this year he's done it incredibly well.
Trevor Richards
The numbers he's produced really aren't good enough to have him graded this highly, but how absolutely vital he's been, and how low the expectations for him were, make up for that. Recency Bias does, too. Richards has gone from essentially being a one-inning guy given a mop-up role that extended to multiple innings if somebody needed to take one for the team, into a guy eating big innings as an opener in Alek Manoah's spot who can also take the ball in leverage if needed. Maybe I'm being overly kind, but with some of the things I've written and said about Richards over the last couple of years, he's earned that kindness. A story as good as his changeup — which, according to Statcast's run values, has been the fifth-best version of the pitch thrown in the majors this year, and in the 96th percentile of all pitches thrown.
(Clip via Sportsnet/@PitchingNinja)
A
Kevin Gausman
I'm honestly not sure what else Kevin Gausman would have to do to get me to add a plus next to this A, but since I'm incorporating a player's expectations into these grades, I suppose my rationale is that I completely believed he was going to be this good. Eight American League pitchers have produced an ERA better than Gausman's, and he isn't in the top 10 in MLB by Baseball Reference's version of WAR (a category currently led by Marcus Stroman), but obviously that's some pretty serious nitpicking. His fWAR is the best of any pitcher in baseball, he trails only Spencer Strider in strikeouts and, more importantly, he gives his team a great chance to win every time he takes the ball. As long as they actually can score some runs for him!
A+
Bo Bichette
The Blue Jays' best player has also been their most consistent this season, and it has absolutely been a treat to watch. Bo in 2023 is simply a better version of the player he was in previous years. The unbelievable bat-to-ball skills are sharper than ever. Combining those with a player making keener swing decisions, while retaining his 25-30 home run power, makes him an incredibly dangerous hitter. It's like he's the guy who had that ridiculous cameo as a rookie in late 2019, except he's done it for twice as long, has been much harder to strike out (16.9%), and looks far more comfortable defensively to boot. He's on pace for his best season, and for a guy who averaged 4.8 fWAR over the last two, that's incredibly impressive. This is it. He’s arrived. He's a superstar. Open up your chequebook already.
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Another banger of a read. Thanks Andrew!
This is what I come for! The analysis, the snark (White's preferred position; lol), the walking back of past snark, great stuff.