{"id":747772,"date":"2026-06-19T18:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T18:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/747772\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T18:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T18:11:08","slug":"how-new-blue-jays-have-outperformed-returning-players-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/747772\/","title":{"rendered":"How new Blue Jays have outperformed returning players in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly halfway through the 2026 MLB season, this year\u2019s Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> are having difficulty following the act of the 2025 edition.<\/p>\n

Living up to expectations following a World Series run is always a tough bit of business, but a 37-38 record is no one\u2019s idea of a good start for this club \u2014 even coming off a sweep of the\u00a0Boston Red Sox. The 2026 Blue Jays have flipped last year\u2019s script in several ways, including succeeding in some places where that team struggled.<\/p>\n

One of the most improbable aspects of last year\u2019s success is that the Blue Jays went 74-88 in 2024, struck out on their biggest off-season moves, and still took off. Max Scherzer and Jeff Hoffman\u00a0pitched a combined 153 innings<\/a>\u00a0with a 0.0 fWAR during the regular season with a 4.82 ERA. Anthony Santander and Andr\u00e9s Gim\u00e9nez\u00a0had 0.1 fWAR<\/a>\u00a0to show for their 590 trips to the dish, hitting .197\/.280\/.306. It didn\u2019t matter because of internal growth elsewhere on the roster.<\/p>\n

This season, the trend has been the exact opposite. As much as the season hasn\u2019t gone as planned, the early returns for the off-season are strong. On the pitching side, Ponce got an unfortunate injury right away, and Scherzer has been ineffective, but the top starting and relief signings \u2014 Dylan Cease<\/a> and Tyler Rogers<\/a> \u2014 have exceeded projections (in this case\u00a0by ZiPS<\/a>).<\/p>\n

On the position player side, the two major additions, Kazuma Okamoto<\/a> and Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez<\/a>, have hovered more around expectations. Still, the Blue Jays are likely happy with both players, who are contributing above-average offence to a lineup that needs that boost. Okamoto\u2019s emergence as a pure power threat is particularly handy for a team that has lacked pop, and his defence has been better than advertised.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Collectively, this quartet has produced 5.0 fWAR, good for 28.7 per cent of the Blue Jays’ team total. In most cases, when new additions hit the ground running on a team that just made the World Series, that\u2019s a recipe for an excellent start.<\/p>\n

That hasn\u2019t been the case for the Blue Jays because those additions have been integrated into a group with key players taking notable steps back \u2014 led by the duo of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer:<\/p>\n

While the team’s two biggest bats have disappointed, they\u2019ve received almost nothing from other potential middle-of-the-lineup threats in Addison Barger and Alejandro Kirk due to injury. That pair produced 6.9 fWAR last year and has given the team just 0.1 in 2026, hitting .140\/.254\/.246 in 67 trips to the plate.<\/p>\n

On a more macro level, players who did not appear for the 2025 Blue Jays have generally outplayed those who have:<\/p>\n

Where all of that leaves the Blue Jays is up to interpretation. Outside of Scherzer, the team\u2019s off-season crop is promising, and all under team control through at least next season. Even Ponce seemed on track to make an impact before a freak injury sent him to the 60-day IL. That\u2019s encouraging for the team in the immediate and medium term. It doesn\u2019t seem like there\u2019s a notable swing-and-miss in the bunch, like Santander could turn out to be. If you believe that Toronto\u2019s core players are significantly better than they\u2019ve shown so far in 2026, there\u2019s reason to be pretty optimistic about what this group can do.<\/p>\n

Another way of looking at the situation is that even with the newest Blue Jays (and a\u00a0stellar rookie class<\/a>) thriving in Toronto, this team has still failed to impress. Cease is now a foundational player, and he\u2019s performed well, but no one else fits that description \u2014 perhaps outside of Louis Varland, depending on how you value relievers. That\u2019s not an existential concern just yet, but it\u2019s worth flagging.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It should come as a surprise to no one that recreating some of 2025\u2019s magic will require the players who drove that success to hit their stride. The good news for the Blue Jays is that the rest of the team looks ready to support that group if they find their way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly halfway through the 2026 MLB season, this year\u2019s Toronto Blue Jays are having difficulty following the act…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-747772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}