Coming in to this season, the rotation was probably the last place you’d look for success, and that wouldn’t have been an unfair assessment. In 2015, the Blue Jays’ rotation was entirely mediocre. They ranked 19th by ERA, 20th by FIP, and 17th by DRA. They were ok, but that was all they needed to be; the Jays’ offense was historically great, and that compensated for any poor pitching. In 2016, with the offensive side of the roster being very much the same, we expected that the outcome would also be the same: That a great offense and good enough pitching would lead the Jays to success. However, only one of those things has been true this season – the Jays have been relatively successful. Through roughly 20 percent of the season, the Jays find themselves in the mix at the top of the AL East, with a real record slightly below their expected record. Although, rather than that having been on the backs of good offense from Edwin Encarnacion, Troy Tulowitzki, and Russell Martin, it is rotational success that has driven the Blue Jays.
At present, the Jays have two starters with sub 3.00 ERAs and four starters with sub 3.60 ERAs. Cumulatively, the starting staff has baseball’s third best ERA, all while leading the league in innings pitched. Given our expectations, that’s pretty weird…but it’s not the weirdest thing about the rotation. Instead, the weirdest thing is just how physically and stylistically diverse they are; how they all go about finding pitching success in completely different ways.
For starters, lets take a quick look at what a few typically successful MLB rotations look like. This season the six other teams with a starting rotation that has a sub 3.50 ERA are the Cubs, Nationals, Mets, White Sox, and Dodgers.
How do those rotations break down?
Cubs: Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Sinkerballer, Innings Eater, Innings Eater
Nationals: Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher
Mets: Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Bartolo Colon
White Sox: Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Innings Eater
Dodgers: Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Power Pitcher, Sinkerballer, Sliderballer(?)
Notice a trend? Yeah, it doesn’t hurt to be a power pitcher.
Then there’s the Blue Jays.
Blue Jays: “Power Pitcher”, Knuckleballer, Changeup Specialist, “Power Pitcher”, Fastball Specialist
As you can see, the Blue Jays have one, maybe two pitchers whom one could classify as a traditional power pitcher. Those classifications are shaky at best, and the rest of the staff is about as odd as can be.
“Power Pitcher” No. 1
One of those two potential power pitchers is Marcus Stroman, who also happens be baseball’s shortest regular starting pitcher. He’s not your typical fastball/slider guy; he’s a sinker/cutter/curve/slider/change/whatever-other-pitch-you-can-come up with guy. Heck, he has even experimented with a quick pitch, which, in some ways, doubles his arsenal. So, even though Stroman may be a power pitcher, you can’t put him in a box. That’s odd.
The Knuckleballer
After Stroman, you have R.A. Dickey, who, as a knuckleballer, might be the personification of odd. In a game full of constantly spinning baseballs, whether it’s from a pitcher’s throw or off a bat, Dickey obsessively tries to make his spin as little as possible. Yet, somehow, he makes it work. Even this season, as he has fought same adverse outcomes (AKA giving up way too many hits), but has only had two real ‘blow up’ starts. That resilience has led Dickey to being one of just five starters in baseball who’ve pitched at least 200 innings in each of the past five seasons. Not even Clayton Kershaw, or the elusive David Price, can make that claim. That’s odd.
The Changeup Specialist
Following Dickey and his spin-less knuckleball, you have a player who thrives on spin for success: Marco Estrada. Estrada is not entirely small in stature at 6’0″ and 200 lbs, but he’s not quite an imposing figure. The same is true of his fastball, which at an average velocity of 89.5 MPH, is the fifth slowest in baseball. Yet, that doesn’t end up mattering because it is Estrada’s changeup, which he throws 30% of the time, that fools hitters so mightily. Unlike a fastball, a changeup’s absolute velocity doesn’t matter. Instead, it is the deception – looking like a fastball – and the difference in velocity between one’s fastball and changeup that matters. In 2015, Marco Estrada had the largest fastball-changeup differential in baseball despite having very little absolute velocity. That’s odd.
“Power Pitcher” No. 2
Next comes the other “power pitcher,” Blue Jays’ newfound pitching darling Aaron Sanchez. If you look at height and velocity alone, Aaron Sanchez certainly fits the traditional definition of a power arm. Presently, his fastball is one of the thirty quickest in baseball, among starters. As well, at 6’4, he’s one of the forty tallest starters in baseball. However, Sanchez uses his velocity and downward plane much differently than most starters his height. Most of them try to pound the upper half of the zone with four-seam fastballs to get strikeouts; he tries to pound the lower half of the zone with two-seamers to get groundouts. That’s odd.
The Fastball Specialist
Lastly, there’s the southpaw: J.A. Happ. Generally, if a pitcher has average to below average fastball velocity, he probably shouldn’t be throwing it as much. Instead, that pitcher should be focusing on developing solid off-speed stuff…at least, that’s the conventional wisdom. In 2015, Happ defied convention by throwing 65% four-seam fastballs in August and September, en route to a 1.85 ERA. This season, he has decided to vary his fastball selection a little more, throwing 36% four-seamers, 31% sinkers, and 13% cutters. Nevertheless, that’s good for the 10th highest fastball percentage among major league starters. That’s odd.
What Does it Mean?
Whether you choose to declare the Blue Jays’ rotation odd, weird, quirky, peculiar, or downright bizarre, it’s the results, not the oddity that ends up mattering. However, given the rotation’s success, it’s actually conceivable that the oddity is somewhat of a competitive advantage, in a few different ways.
For those who don’t already know, there is a rather strong theory that states that a starter who pitches the day after a knuckleballer has a slight advantage. When he looked at the numbers in 2013, a FanGraphs community member named Christopher Carruthers found a noticeable impact; he called it The R.A. Dickey Effect. He noticed that over R.A. Dickey’s career, starters the next day had a 26% lower ERA, 16% lower WHIP, and 19% lower FIP. The theory and the data are backed up by a reasonable amount of logic, as it had long been said that a knuckleballer could mess with a player’s swing.
Now, it’d be foolish to think that as large an effect could be at play with the rest of the Blue Jays staff, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there. Therefore, it’s reasonable to think that the Jays’ starters get some advantage from being both different from one another, and different from the rest of the league. There’s a lot of variance in their pitching styles, velocities, and types. That variance is further amplified when you look at how the Jays have set up the rotation order. By average velocity (all pitches), the starters go from 89.9 MPH to 76.3 MPH to 84.6 MPH to 91.9 MPH to 89.2 MPH. Then, by most prominent pitch type, they go from a sinker to a knuckleball to a changeup to a two-seam fastball to a four-seam fastball. With limited data, this is a theory that will have to wait until the end of the season for further analysis, but it is a trend to watch.
The more concrete competitive edge for oddity comes in the form of dollars paid for performance. The Blue Jays three non-pre-arbitration starters are making $10 million (Happ), $11.5 million (Estrada), and $12 million (Dickey). Also, each of them are on contracts that were for three guaranteed years or fewer when signed. In contrast, similar, but more traditional, pitchers like Mike Leake and Wei-Yin Chen got $16 million per year for five years this past offseason. There’s a good argument that not only are each of the Jays’ trio cheaper, but also as good or better than Leake and Chen once they’re combined together. Even Dickey, warts and all, has averaged 2.5 WARP in his three seasons as a Blue Jay. It pays to be normal, and that Jays’ triad is anything but.
For the future, the Jays oddity-driven success has set them up with a good amount of cost certainty, and subsequently, budget flexibility. In the following few offseasons, the team has the money to go and grab a consistent top of the rotation talent. However, they might not even need one.