Friday, July 24

TORONTO -- This has been a stunning, frustrating season for the Blue Jays, and all of the numbers tend to back up the eye test. 

These are the numbers which capture what’s gone wrong. 

1. 219 players

This is how many had more home runs than Vladimir Guerrero Jr. this season, entering play on Wednesday. If you can name all 219, you get to take an at-bat for the Blue Jays game in September. 

This season has been stunning in every way. Last October, we watched as Guerrero unlocked the highest levels of his talent, batting .397 with eight home runs and a 1.289 OPS over 18 games. All of this just months after signing his 14-year, $500 million extension. How have we possibly ended up here? 

Guerrero has homered just six times in 2026, and still hasn’t hit one out at Rogers Centre. Bad weeks or even bad months are going to happen -- and we’ve seen them from Guerrero before -- but nothing like this. It’s feeling like a lost year for Guerrero, and while he’s a sure bet to come back as the most motivated player on the planet next spring, that doesn’t matter right now. 

It feels like the Blue Jays are drifting out of the race at this point, but for long stretches of the season when they hovered just a couple of games out of the final Wild Card spot, it was easy to play that game of “what if?” with Guerrero. If his OPS were .875 instead of hovering below .700, would they be in a playoff spot? If he’d hit 18 home runs by now instead of just six, how many games would that have flipped? 

2. 20 times

If you score one or zero runs, good luck to you. The Blue Jays have done this 20 times already, nearly one-fifth of their games. It’s already happened six times in July, too, a pair of three-game stretches where this offense has fallen completely silent. 

You can win without a powerhouse offense as long as “average” production stays that way from game to game, backed by elite pitching and defense. The Rays rank 14th in runs scored, but haven’t had as many power outages and play airtight baseball around this. The Blue Jays, too often, have asked their pitchers to be perfect. 

3. 87.9 mph

The Blue Jays’ average exit velocity, as a team, ranks 29th in baseball ahead of only the Rockies. They rank right near the bottom (28th) in their percentage of hard-hit balls, too, which counts any ball hit over 95 mph. 

Again, this only works if your offense is doing great work on the bases, your pitchers rank near the top of the league and your defense is elite. The Blue Jays haven’t had that balance. 

This is the one point manager John Schneider keeps coming back to, which has become an issue of mental approach more than swing mechanics. Schneider wants his players to “let it rip” and is fond of saying “I’d rather you be 0-and-1 than 0-for-1.” Instead, the manager is seeing too many hitters trying to make contact and get on base.

4. Negative 1

When you rank team defenses based on Fielding Run Value, the Blue Jays sit in sixth place at +20. This means their defense has been worth 20 runs above average. That’s a bit misleading, though. 

The Blue Jays’ catchers, by themselves, are worth a value of +21 here. Brandon Valenzuela instantly became one of the best defensive catchers in baseball when he was promoted earlier this season and Alejandro Kirk ranks right up there, especially when it comes to framing and blocking. Even Tyler Heineman provided defensive value while he was still with the club. The catchers, as a group, are carrying this entire value.

Narrow this to just the Blue Jays’ infielders and outfielders? That group has been worth -1 run, good for 14th in the league. This might be the most surprising part of the Blue Jays’ struggles, particularly with defensive staples like Daulton Varsho and Ernie Clement.

5. 258 strikeouts

Can Dylan Cease reach the number he’s on pace for? There’s some math and assumptions at play here, of course. Cease has averaged 8.6 strikeouts per start, so if he makes 12 more starts, that tracks out to 258. 

We may never see a pitcher match Roger Clemens, who struck out 292 and 271 in his two seasons here (1997-98). Robbie Ray’s Cy Young season (‘21) ranks third with 248 strikeouts, though, and Cease has a shot. 

We’re at that uncomfortable point when veteran players on this team will be discussed in trade talks, especially those who are pending free agents. That means Kevin Gausman, George Springer, Daulton Varsho, Shane Bieber and potentially others. 

Gausman’s start Tuesday against the Rays wasn’t pretty, as he lasted just 3 1/3 innings. This could have been his last home start with the Blue Jays, though. For such a key, foundational player for the past five years in this organization, it felt strange to hear Gausman suddenly need to address this.

"I'm not going to think about that too much. I'm a Blue Jay right now, and the focus is this team, this room and those guys,” Gausman said. “That's where my mind is at right now. That is kind of crazy to think about."

It’s that time of year now. Keep refreshing MLB.com each day for our extensive coverage of the Trade Deadline in all 30 markets. Get started today with this look at the best player who could be traded at each position.

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