What Can We Expect Regarding Blue Jays Strikeouts?
The Blue Jays have managed to get off to a respectable start to the season. They have had some timely hits and the pitching has been rock solid. One area of concern has been the team's high strikeout rate. The Blue Jays currently lead all teams in major league baseball with a 29.5 strikeout percentage.
The Blue Jays have a reputation of being a strikeout prone team, but their reputation may not be deserving. Contrary to popular belief, they were actually exactly league average last season with a 21.6% K rate, ranking 15th in baseball.
There is also this idea that the problem only got worse when the Blue Jays added high strikeout players this offseason. This isn't entirely true either. Yangervis Solarte and Aledmys Diaz actually have career strikeout rates significantly lower than league average at 11.6% and 13.6%. Curtis Granderson has a reputation as a high strikeout player, but his 23.3% last season and 22.7% for his career are better than many would think. The only strikeout machine that the team added to play regularly is Randall Grichuk and his career 29.9% strikeout rate.
Looking at the players who left the team we have Bautista and Carrera with above average strikeout rates last season, Goins with slightly below and Barney with a good K rate. Comparing the new additions to the players who left and it's hard to see a significant increase in strikeouts for this team. Granderson and Carrera are a wash, Grichuk is a big increase over Bautista, but Diaz and Solarte are a big drop compared to Goins and Barney.
The Blue Jays currently feature only 5 players with career strikeout rates above last year's league average: Ngoepe, Grichuk, Maile, Smoak and Granderson. Russell Martin's career strikeout rate is below average, but has ticked up in recent seasons to the point where he should be expected to strike out more than average. Josh Donaldson saw his strikeout rate climb above average
last season. It will be interesting to see if he lowers his rate closer to his career norms or if last season was the start of a new trend. Kendrys Morales also saw a rise in strikeouts and his rate was essentially league average at 21.7%.
The starting roster has 4 players who we should expect to run a K rate higher than average and 2 more players who should be right around average.
Travis, Pearce, Pillar, Solarte and Diaz should all strikeout less than average based on their career numbers thus far. Pearce and Travis are close enough to average that it's possible to see them creep above average. A lot of pressure will be on Pillar, Solarte and Diaz to maintain their extremely low strikeout rates if this team is going to keep from being one of the league's strikeout leaders.
Based on the players on the roster we shouldn't expect the Blue Jays to continue to lead the league in strikeouts. There is a decent chance that we will see them strike out more than the average team this season, but overall they should be somewhere in the middle of the pack. If Teoscar Hernandez starts taking playing time away from guys like Granderson and Pearce then I would expect them to rank even higher. Also, if an injury forces Ngoepe into regular playing time I would expect to see the Blue Jays creep toward the top of the strikeout leaderboard. This won't be an elite contact team, but hopefully they can cut down on the strikeout rate we've seen so far. They have enough power up and down the lineup that if they make enough contact we should have a better year with the bats than last season.
