The Blue Jays offense is in shambles. Seemingly every year around this time -- that is, interleague play -- the Blue Jays roster collapses on itself, struggling to put up any kind of a fight against their opposition. This year, the offense has been especially putrid having scored 4 or less runs in each of their last 8 games. Their record is 3-5 in those 8 games, due mostly to strong pitching performances by the starting rotation, particularly team ace Ricky Romero.
The question that needs to be asked, however, is are these struggles an isolated incident -- a cold stretch if you will, or are they a microcosm of a poor roster being exposed with the smoke and mirrors of "small ball" gone?
I have to lean towards the latter. The Blue Jays offense is constructed in a way that almost relies on hot streaks from the poor hitters to have any form of success, as when the poor hitters are hitting like themselves, the good hitters can easily be worked around, and the offense has entire innings where they send up nothing but garbage. While they are led by the league's premier hitter Jose Bautista (.474 wOBA) and have strong secondary pieces in Adam Lind (.410 wOBA), Yunel Escobar (.344 wOBA), and J.P. Arencibia (.316 wOBA), the remaining 5 spots in the lineup have been, for lack of better words, dead weight. Below are the Blue Jays wOBA values, by position, and their rankings compared to the rest of major league baseball.
RF -- .474 wOBA (1st), 4.5 WAR
1B -- .341 wOBA (15th), 2.2 WAR
SS -- .344 wOBA (5th), 1.9 WAR
C -- .334 wOBA (6th), 1.6 WAR
CF -- .292 wOBA (26th), 0.6 WAR
LF -- .295 wOBA (24th), 0.5 WAR
2B -- .272 wOBA (26th), 0.3 WAR
3B -- .269 wOBA (27th), -0.1 WAR
DH -- .294 wOBA (12th in AL), -0.7 WAR
As you can see, the Blue Jays have 4 positions ranking in the top half of baseball in wOBA, and first base would me much higher if not for Adam Lind's month long DL stint and hitters such as Juan Rivera and David Cooper getting extended time there.
Even when considering defense and base running, the remaining 5 positions have played as roughly replacement level players, at best. A replacement level player is basically organizational filler and often goes by many names among baseball fans, inclding the "Quad-A player" and "25th man". With a combined 0.6 WAR from 5 positions, each of those 5 spots has averaged 0.12 WAR this season.
In other words, on any given day, the Blue Jays lineup contains 1 superstar, 1 star, 2 above average players, and 5 players who belong on the bench of in the minors. As a serious baseball fan for over 10 years, I can't honestly say I've seen a lineup like this, particularly in the American League where the DH position should make the offense more potent. Toronto's -0.7 WAR contribution from the DH is unfathomable to the point of being laughable.
Perhaps even more amazing than the horrific nature of those 5 spots in the lineup is that, despite them, Toronto still has the 10th best wOBA (and 15th best WAR) as a team in all of baseball. We're an average to above average lineup. It's borderline unbelieveable to read and believe that sentence after seeing the numbers I just mentioned above. Jose Bautista has (albeit with substantial contributions from Lind, Escobar, and Arencibia) basically carried this team on his back for 3 months. His WAR of 4.5 consitutes 43.7% of our positional players' 10.3 WAR. We have 12-13 positional players on our roster at any given time, and one of those 12 or 13 has accounted for nearly 44% of the production. Incredible. Perhaps even more amazing is that Jose Bautista's 4.5 WAR is greater than the totals for both the Athletics (3.1 WAR) and Mariners (1.7 WAR) positional players.
Obviously, the offensive issues need to be addressed. Perhaps the most devastating and unfortunate loss this team has suffered this season is Brett Lawrie's broken hand, seemingly days before his promotion to take over the reins at third base. It was recently revealed that the injury will keep Lawrie out until atleast August, and with such news it was announced Jose Bautista will temporarily move to third base in order to remove that black hole from the lineup and create a position for the recently recalled Eric Thames. Thames will play right field, left field, as well as some DH for Toronto. Thames should help the offense, however his defense in right field does concern me. The next logical move would be to promote Travis Snider, who after a rough start to the year has revamped his swing in the minor leagues. Snider was recently hit in the helmet by a pitch, and although he is symptom free, he is likely still a couple days away from returning to the lineup. Once he has played a few games back in Las Vegas, I expect him to be promoted to Toronto, which should really help the club.
These 3 young players would dramatically improve the offense, and give Jose Bautista the support he needs and deserves. While lineup speculation is never wise, by mid August I hope to see Toronto fielding the following lineup:
1. SS Escobar (R)
2. LF Snider (L)
3. RF Bautista (R)
4. 1B Lind (L)
5. 3B Lawrie (R)
6. DH Thames (L)
7. C Arencibia (R)
8. 2B Hill (R)
9. CF Davis (R)
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