I’m continuing my review of the Blue Jays’ roster through the lens of one stat that tells the story of each player’s season. Last week we covered the infield and the outfield. Today it’s the rotation’s turn.
Chris Bassitt: 45.2% of pitches on the edge of the zone. Update: now 44.9% on the season. Bassitt continues his approach from early in the season. He isn’t throwing as hard as he did in past seasons, but he’s locating better on the edges. That helped him tie his career low walk rate (at least before his rough four walk outing on Friday night) with his best K-BB% since his Oakland days. Unfortunatly, trouble with the long ball has resulted in a slightly worse than average ERA.
Kevin Gausman: 32.2 inches of vertical break on splitters. Update: He is now averaging 33.6 inches of vertical break. My theory back in May was that Gausman’s struggles in 2024 traced mostly to losing a tick off his fastball and some bite on his splitter. He’s regained most of both this season. Somewhat surprisingly, though, it hasn’t brought back most of the strikeouts he lost between ‘23 and ‘24. He’s only been marginally more effective than last season, although with peripheral stats that look meaningfully improved. It’s at least comforting that he looks set to retain his #2/3 form through this season and hopefully next.
Jose Berrios: 9.6% walk rate. Update: 6.9% since June 29th. Berrios’ got off to a rough start because he was battling his command a bit. He’s fixed that problem,but in the last six week a new one has cropped up: he’s striking out barely 17% of the batters he faces, and getting hit pretty hard by the 76% who put it in play. That’s resulted in a 4.95 ERA and a FIP that fully backs it up.
Bowden Francis: .276 BABIP. Incomplete. Francis has been on the IL with a shoulder issue since June, and only received clearance to resume a throwing program on Friday. He’s very unlikely to factor in at all this season.
Eric Lauer: 77.4% contact rate. Update: 81.9% contact allowed since June 29th. Lauer began his time with the Jays missing bats at an (unusually strong for him) league average rate. He’s regressed in each of the last two quarters, but he’s still posted a 3.40 ERA over the last quarter. Like last time, I’m not convinced he’s actually good, but a growing pile of quality innings is getting harder and harder to ignore.
Max Scherzer: 59 batters faced. Update: 183 batters faced since June 29. Ever so quietly, Max Scherzer is rounding into form. He’s made all eight of his starts in the last quarter, pitching 46 innings with a 47:9 strikeout to walk ratio. He’s been bedeviled by home runs, with nine in the span, but his 34% hard hit rate suggests that luck is a factor there. He might just be able to contribute to a postseason rotation one more time.