Kirk Hard, Play Hard

 

It's June. So the Blue Jays are good now. 

Not that they weren't good before. They were a 2nd/3rd place team already this season, with an insanely good rotation and some great power players, but they weren't entirely a good team yet since Hernandez, Guerrero and Bichette hadn't quite shown up yet. But, seeing as it's law around here for the Toronto Blue Jays to be really good in June, the Jays are good now. I'm not mad about it, it's just what happens.

The big exclamation point of this recent streak turned winning month is that the Jays can finally unite behind one singular, satisfying starting catcher after years of batting around Danny Jansen and Reese McGuire til one of them hit higher than .221. Alejandro Kirk, as I expected him to when he came up in late 2020, has become a truly special player at the backstop, is hitting .322 with 16 RBIs, and has the highest WAR of any position player with 2.1. He's also had a pretty excellent season so far as a defender, which gives him a leg up on a lot of his competition. And with Danny Jansen injured and Zack Collins mostly making starts at DH, it seems like Kirk has finally won the long-gestating starting catcher battle, and I couldn't be happier to see it.

The rest of the team is coming into form as well. Matt Chapman's beginning to hit for average again, and is up to 7 homers and 23 RBIs. I expect him to get hotter as June goes on. Bichette and Guerrero both have 30 RBIs and are heating up, though not at peak averages quite yet. Santiago Espinal has continued to be the contact highlight, hitting .293 with 55 hits. Springer is teetering around peak levels of plate assistance. Lourdes Gurriel is beginning to heat up, with 20 RBIs so far. A lot more people are helping the cause than there were last month, and it's a good sign for the future.

The pitching has calmed a bit, as while Jordan Romano has 16 saves, he is a bit more human than he was in April, but the Manoah-Gausman duo is still pretty unstoppable, and Stripling and Kikuchi have low enough ERAs. The trick is gonna be making sure the rotation is wholly intimidating even with Ryu out and Berrios not on his a-game. Hopefully they can swing somebody in July if they need to, and hopefully he'll be vaccinated.

This is a promising start to June for the Blue Jays, but if it's like any other June in Toronto, they're gonna need to stay on people's radars long after the month has ended. And in a division led with an iron fist by the 40-win Yankees, is that a possibility? 

Coming Tomorrow- A shortstop finally begins to come into his own after years of hinting at the possibility of doing so.