Late Spring

 

The Blue Jays, at the moment, are sort of a mixed blessing of a ballclub. They are doing well, hedging in and out of .500, and have gotten production from Guerrero, Bichette and Springer. Yet one stat that is very troubling to me is that Daulton Varsho, who's only been healthy for 13 games this season, has 6 home runs, a mark that nobody else who has been playing this whole time has been able to top. Vladimir Guerrero, in all his money, has only hit 5 home runs this year. Just as a reminder, every season since we got back from the pandemic he's hit over 25. One year he hit 48. But no, so far he's only hit 5 homers and 20 RBIs, which is a very light total for a month and a half of play.

I also look at George Springer, who has shown that he can still be incredible, but the magic might be going away. In April, Springer hit .306 with 12 RBIs and 4 steals. So far in May he's hit .196. Same pace of RBIs, he's got 6 already, but the production has gone way down, and he's looking more like he did last year. He is, to be far, 35, and isn't as consistent as he was in Houston, but after a start like that where it looks like you've got your leadoff guy back, this drop-off just hurts. Springer obviously wants to succeed, but we're getting to the point where he's clearly past his prime and isn't contributing as much as his younger contemporaries.

The upsetting part is there's a lot of spots on this team filled by people who may have been the answer at one time but aren't performing well enough to earn the designation. Will Wagner and Jonatan Clase were both prime rookie picks heading into the season that aren't hitting. Alan Rosen was given left field out of camp and just couldn't do anything with it. Easton Lucas and Bowden Francis both have ERAs over 5, after all that promise, and Jake Bloss, who was a big piece of the Kikuchi deal, still has yet to make his 2025 debut. And focusing on Vlad and Bo, who were ONCE the big young stars but are now mellowing out while the actual young stars are...sort of there...is an odd tactic. 

I also think about the fact that three of the team's big postseason moves [Anthony Santander, Andres Gimenez and Max Scherzer] haven't really panned out. Tony's barely hitting, and the other two have been hurt. So any attempt to really build this team back up just hasn't worked, and a lot of it really isn't the Jays' fault.

There's always a way for this team to turn things around, and June is famously the month the Jays tend to get hot, but...I don't know if this sort of dysfunction can really be fixed. At least not at this level of it.

Coming Tomorrow- We were all worried, but never fear, this guy still has plenty of time left to strike everybody out.