The Optimist’s Guide to the 2020 Blue Jays

I’ll be honest, putting the words “optimist” and “2020” together in a sentence doesn’t seem right.

From wildfires to a pandemic to murder hornets and so on and so on and so on, 2020 has already established itself as a cursed year. We’re just over halfway through and it feels like it’s been a decade.

But, while it might be difficult to be an optimist as we continue to navigate probably the strangest year in our lives, we have baseball to lean back on. Hope springs eternal in this silly game, so, if you need something to manifest some optimism about, here’s your remedy.

The COVID-19 pandemic shutting the world down for a few months has, among many others things, resulted in Major League Baseball opting to squeeze its season into a 60-game mad dash. Without a full 162-game slate for the law of averages to separate the pretenders from the contenders over the course of the dog days of summer, this mini-season is going to be absolutely jam-packed with randomness and chaos.

For a young team like the Blue Jays with a whole bunch of untapped potential and upside? That’s a pretty exciting prospect.

As FanGraphs pointed out a month ago when they released their ZiPS projections, the Blue Jays were one of the teams that saw a massive boost in their playoff odds when the sample size shrank from 162 to 60 games. Back in March, the Jays had a whopping 0.6 percent chance to make the playoffs. Now? It’s all the way up to 15.1 percent!

If everything goes right, this team could easily be in the mix for a wild card spot come September. Of course, seldom in baseball does everything go right, but let’s suspend ourselves from reality for a moment and take a stroll down an imaginary land in which that happens.

The 2020 Toronto Blue Jays are a much better team than the 2019 Toronto Blue Jays were. A key reason for optimism comes down to the internal progression of the team’s young core.

The day the Jays traded Marcus Stroman to the Mets last summer, they also suffered a 10-9 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, putting them at 40-67 for the season. The next day, Bo Bichette made his debut against the Kansas City Royals. The team went 27-28 the rest of the way.

So, when we look at the 67-95 record attached to the 2019 Blue Jays, which represents one of the worst marks in franchise history, we have to remember that it isn’t an all-encompassing representation of where the team really was at the end of the season.

When I say the 2020 Blue Jays are better than the 2019 Blue Jays, I don’t only mean that they’ve improved from the half-assed, anonymous lineup they trotted out there on opening day. I mean they’ve improved from the exciting group that played damn-near .500 baseball for the final two months of the season.

There weren’t many games in which the Jays’ lineup featured all of Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Lourdes Gurriel, Cavan Biggio, and Danny Jansen at the same time. Simply having all of those players in the lineup game in, game out, would be a huge boost for the team compared to where they were last year.

Beyond that young, core group, the Jays also boast players with plenty of upside.

Randal Grichuk slashed an underwhelming .232/.280/.457 line in 2019, which was a fairly significant downgrade from the .245/.301/.502 line he produced in his first season in Toronto. Grichuk returning to the player he was in 2018 would be a huge boost for Toronto’s lineup and would go a long way when it comes to validating the extension he signed last year. We were all shocked when this front office signed Justin Smoak to an extension, hopefully they get this one right too.

Another rebound candidate is Travis Shaw, Toronto’s buy-low addition from the off-season. Shaw had the worst season of his career offensively last year, putting together a miserable .551 OPS. Apparently, this was the result of a change he made to his swing that he has since fixed. Between 2017 and 2018, Shaw slashed a .258/.347/.497 line with Milwaukee. A rebound to anywhere near that level would be great.

Teoscar Hernandez has certainly shown flashes of brilliance since being acquired from the Houston Astros in 2017. His best stretch came last season after he returned from a stint in Triple-A. Hernandez had a miserable start to the season, got demoted, came back with an adjusted swing, and proceeded to slash a .248/.325/.548 line the rest of the way. If post-swing-adjustment Hernandez is here to stay, the Jays have themselves a legit bat on their hands.

And then there are other names, like Rowdy Tellez, Derek Fisher, and Billy McKinney, all of whom have put up big numbers at the Triple-A level. A breakout season offensively from any of these players would further add to the depth of what appears to be rounding into a very formidable lineup.

Another big reason the Blue Jays are better this year than they were last year is their overhauled starting rotation.

The team went out and added an ace in free agency, signing Hyun-Jin Ryu to an $80-million deal. This contract showed that the Jays were ready to start to turn things around.

Ryu was one of the best pitchers in baseball last season. His 2.32 ERA was the best in the National League and he boasted the fewest walks per nine innings (1.2) among all pitchers in baseball. That showing proved that the 1.97 ERA season he produced in 2018 over an 82-inning sample size was no fluke.

While it’s reasonable to expect regression from Ryu as he moves to facing the American League East and lineups that feature a designated hitter, he replaces Stroman as the only top-of-the-rotation starter the team had last season.

Actually, to be fair, the Jays had another ace-like guy last year, though it was only for a few games. Matt Shoemaker was insane for the Jays before his season came to an abrupt end due to a freak injury. Shoemaker posted a sparkling 1.57 ERA, albeit, in a five-game sample size. A healthy season from Shoemaker, even just at his career average 3.81 ERA, would be another big addition.

Toronto’s other major off-season addition was Tanner Roark. Though this wasn’t as sexy as the Ryu signing, Roark is a decent back-end starter. At the very least, it’s fair to say that he’ll be an improvement over the likes of Clay Buchholz and Clayton Richard.

And then there’s Nate Pearson, the organization’s No. 1 prospect. Pearson has been dubbed as the ace of the future and he looked the part in spring training. While Ryu was the big front-end starter addition this off-season, the Jays could be adding another this season if Pearson hits the ground running.

When you lay it all out like that, you can absolutely start to see why there’s reason to be excited about this season.

If it were a normal, 162-game slog, I probably wouldn’t hold out much hope that this fresh-faced, still-fairly-flawed team could hold up with serious contenders over the course of the marathon. But in a 60-game sprint, where a couple of nuclear hot streaks will make more of a difference than ever? Sure!

So, with the start of the season finally right around the corner, let’s take a moment to throw on a pair of rose coloured glasses and bask in some much-needed optimism. This team, loaded with young, exciting talent, an enthusiastic something-to-prove attitude, along with a revamped starting rotation led by a legitimate ace, could click this summer and do something special.