TORONTO – Relegated to watching his Toronto Blue Jays take on the New York Yankees this week by a freak mishap while taking pre-game grounders, Bo Bichette found some solace in how well his teammates played during a remarkable four-game sweep.
“Really fun team to watch,” he said.
The Blue Jays were certainly that while taking sole possession of first place in the American League East, extending their lead with a 4-3, 10-inning win over the Los Angeles Angels on Friday, but that was far from the only thing that stuck out to him from the bench.
“Right now, our team just boils down to belief. Like, everybody believes in each other,” he said. “One through 13 as an offence, we believe everybody can get the job done at any point. And everybody has gotten the job done at some point. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever been a part of a team like this before.
“This team is just the definition of a team,” Bichette added. “That’s the best compliment I can give us.”
The collective nature of the club’s surge – they’re 34-18 since rallying from a 4-0 deficit to beat the Angels 8-5 on May 8, averting a three-game sweep in Anaheim – has been a driving factor in their success.
But so too has been their offensive renaissance since that fateful comeback, and particularly intriguing is the way the Blue Jays have raised their slug while simultaneously cutting their strikeout percentage.
In their first 36 games before that comeback, the Blue Jays slugged only .356
— 27th in baseball — while making relatively consistent contact, as evidenced by a 19.5 strikeout rate that was fourth-lowest in the majors.
In the 51 games since then, not including Friday, their slugging percentage of .439 was tied for fourth in the majors, while their strikeout rate, counter-intuitively, dropped to a best-in-baseball 16.3 per cent.
Some measure of contact usually gets sacrificed for such spikes in power, but the Blue Jays are managing to avoid any sort of trade-off and are instead getting the best of both worlds.
How exactly are they doing that, hitting coach David Popkins?
“Typically, if you’re moving more efficiently, you’re not going to give up any contact. If you’re gaining speed from bad patterns, that’s when you lose the contact,” he replied. “A lot of these guys, their patterns are great. So giving them the intent and the ability to get their best swings off gives them freedom to move even more efficiently than when they get a little more reserved, and they try to restrict themselves to only hitting a pitch in one direction, or only hitting a pitch a certain type of way. Let them swing and swing with intent, work through the middle of the field and whatever happens after that, happens.”
Intent has been a word the Blue Jays have stressed in their approach to hitting since the off-season, and is at the root of their production. Last season, the club felt good about its ability to make contact, but not necessarily with the type of contact it was making.
Partly, that was due to how infrequently they believed their hitters were getting their best swings off and their bat-speed metrics were reflective of that. Their average bat-speed of 70.6 m.p.h last year ranked 27th, while their fast-swing rate – swings at 75 m.p.h. or higher – was only 18.6 per cent, which was 24th in the majors.
Through their first 36 games this year, the Blue Jays were following the same trends, with an average bat-speed of 70.7 m.p.h. that was dead last in the majors and a fast-swing rate of 20.7 per cent that was 23rd. From May 8 onwards, however, their average bat-speed ticked up to 71.4, which ranked 23rd, but their fast-swing rate spiked up to 25.8 per cent, which is 12th.
“It’s just the freedom to let guys take aggressive swings when they want to take aggressive swings and it’s OK to miss, it’s OK to chase when you’ve earned the count or the scenario where you can get your best swing off and the situation calls for it,” explained Popkins. “A lot of guys, they get into situations and are afraid to be embarrassed swinging and missing or chasing a bad pitch, and their swings get a little more reserved, they don’t allow themselves to be the dangerous athletes that they are. We let guys fail, we let guys work through certain things and with that you get aggressiveness, you get fearlessness.
“That’s what I think we’ve been seeing.”
Ernie Clement, the team’s contact leader at 86 per cent whose swing metrics have stayed consistent throughout the season, described intent as the key word, one that helps give the Blue Jays a framework from which to do damage.
“We’re OK going 0-1 instead of being 0-for-1,” he explained. “If you get fooled, swing through it and then battle your tail off the rest of the at-bat. But it goes back to the intent. We’re not letting them get us out on a pitcher’s pitch in the first couple pitches. If I get out on a fastball down the middle on the first pitch, I’m OK with that. That’s my intent. But if I ground out on a pitch that’s two balls off the plate outside, that’s not doing anybody any good.
“So, I just think we have a really good understanding of the zone, and we’re just a bunch of grinders grinding out long at-bats, really making starting pitchers work.”
In concert with other elements like situational hitting and base-running, the Blue Jays turned an offence that was the fourth-least productive in the majors prior to May 8 at 127 runs to its third most prolific at 274 runs.
Home runs have been a significant part of that, from last in the majors at 25 through the first 36 games to eighth in the subsequent 51 contests with 67, but retaining the contact means the Blue Jays always have a secondary option when the big blows aren’t there.
“I think we’re a complete offence,” said Bichette. “We have plenty enough guys that can that can create the firepower when we need it. But I think that stuff comes and goes at times. And what you need to be a consistent offensive player, or a consistent offensive team, is the ability to compete and grind and get knocks and get tough knocks. I think we can do it all.
“Like I said, I don’t think I’ve been a part of a team like this. And it’s an exciting team to play for.”
