Getting outs late in games has been a challenge for the Blue Jays all year
Photo credit: © John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images
Sep 10, 2024, 09:00 EDTUpdated: Sep 10, 2024, 09:08 EDT
After being spoiled with a comparatively solid bullpen for the past couple of years, the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen started to fall apart right at the beginning of the 2024 season. Traditionally, a bullpen’s performance has been among the most difficult things to predict from year to year. Even so, building and developing a bullpen with highly effective relievers with a proven track record has been the recipe for success for many teams. So, what went wrong with Toronto’s bullpen this year?
The answer to this question is never easy and the most colloquial answer is that everything that can go wrong went wrong. Key arms Jordan Romano and Erik Swanson were out for an extended period of time, and Yariel Rodriguez and Bowden Francis missed time due to injuries. Besides, the remaining relievers simply didn’t perform well. Consider how Tim Mayza was one of the more reliable pitchers in the bullpen until he was designated for assignment earlier this season. Before getting traded to the Minnesota Twins, Trevor Richards largely underperformed as he struggled with more volatile outings. He was also eventually designated for assignment after the trade.
But why is a bullpen more volatile to begin with? Generally, a major league relief pitcher throws significantly fewer innings than a starter. With relievers throwing an inning or two at a time, it becomes objectively harder to predict how relief pitchers carry on their performances year to year. In addition, if more relievers experience injury and even a few experience a velocity drop or mechanical issues in their pitching, those factors can profoundly influence the outcome of not just one game but many.
Bearing that in mind, the Blue Jays were already showing warning signs in 2023. The team yielded a hard-hit percentage of 40.3 percent but was named one of the better bullpens that season because they recorded third-least contact in baseball. The 2023 bullpen also had a high strikeout percentage, which helped them to win games. If you recall, the 2023 Blue Jays almost exclusively depended on pristine pitching to record wins as their lineup struggled massively.
That luck was bound to turn and it sure did in 2024. While the 2024 season isn’t quite over yet, it’s clear that the strikeout percentage went down and the earned-run average (ERA) crept up. In 2023, the Blue Jays’ strikeouts per nine-inning (K/9) stood at 9.79, but so far in 2024, the K/9 is currently at 7.95, which is much comparably lower.
Toronto’s home run-to-fly ball rate (HR/FB) also increased from 12.2 percent in 2023 to 15.0% in 2024. This isn’t a surprise, as The Athletic recently mentioned how the Blue Jays have allowed the most home runs so far in the league. While Toronto’s bullpen isn’t the only party to blame in these statistics, this mention emphasizes the weaker pitching performances in general, including relievers.
Other than that, some other notable statistics are visibly lower left on base percentage (LOB%) from 74.7% in 2023 to 69.5% in 2024 and wins above replacement (WAR) from 4.6 in 2023 to -2.4 in 2024. Keep in mind that these statistics also only tell a small part of the story. These general statistics don’t account for the fact that the Blue Jays traded away some of their better bullpen talents, nor does it pinpoint who yielded what results when they are grouped together.
Ever since the trade (and even before), Toronto has featured many different casts of relievers, such as Ryan Burr, José Cuas, Paolo Espino, Luis Frías, Chad Green, Brendon Little, Tommy Nance, Zach Pop and Erik Swanson. Out of these relievers, Cuas and Espino were designated for assignment, while the rest pitched fairly consistently despite volatile results.
So far, the Blue Jays have gone through many pitchers in their bullpen to help with the workload and have suffered a great deal. The bullpen results weren’t there from the beginning and that unfortunately hasn’t changed as fall settles in.
The worsening bullpen was one of the reasons why Toronto couldn’t come out of games against the National League’s heavyweights successfully. There’s room to blame offensive woes for Toronto’s series against Philadelphia and Atlanta but a serious lack of elite bullpen performance has definitely hurt the team’s chance of winning.
But the Blue Jays’ relief pitching performance isn’t a surprise at this point, given that the team admitted to their lost season as they parted with major league talents at the trade deadline. And with that trade-off, there will be more blown saves and missed opportunities as the team finishes off a rocky season and a month.
That’s one of the reasons why the Blue Jays painfully lost their first game in the series to the New York Mets on Monday night. There’s no denying that offensive performances on both ends were putrid and that certainly contributed to how the game played out. However, Toronto simply had a worse bullpen than New York did. That’s just the price you pay when you’ve become a worse team in the league.
Granted, the Blue Jays are aiming for 2025 and the future. Hopefully, health and offseason signings will be on their side by then.