The Blue Jays Stuff Report will be appearing in this space every two weeks. The metric was created by Dr. Mike Sonne, who has a PhD in biomechanics from McMaster University. For his work on pitcher fatigue, injury, and other baseball related research, please visit his website over at www.mikesonne.ca.
It’s Monday morning, and you’re feeling sluggish. Put on that second cup of coffee, and lose yourself in the numbers. It’s the “stuff” report.
Blue Jays Starters
Ho – hum. The Jays starters keep cruising along. If anything, the Blue Jays represent a microcosm of the entire MLB. There are so many ways that professional pitchers can try to get hitters out, and we see all of them from this starting rotation – that may be the reason why the Jays starters have been so effective. They are constantly keeping hitters off balance, because they can never settle in to a groove and just focus on soft tossers, or hard throwers. Nothing really jumps out over the past two weeks, despite a downward trend in Stuff from Marco Estrada – I think it’s safe to say that the results negate the Stuff metric in this instance. While his overall stuff value is fairly low, the separation that Marco gets between his fastball and his offspeed pitches in resultant break distance is 20.81″. This is in the top 30 of all starting pitchers in the MLB. Take a look at this change up dropping off the table during last year`s playoffs to get an idea of how nasty his stuff can be.
Blue Jays Relievers
It is encouraging to see the race between Biagini and Osuna for who has the best bullpen stuff on the Jays. This gives me confidence that their issues will be resolved soon, and the pen will start to stabilize. Once again for all of the Jays regular pen members, their stuff has remained fairly stable. While Drew Storen had a large drop in Stuff last report, it appears to have recovered slightly. Drew has also turned it around on the field recently and started to flash some of that early 2015 form. If he can keep that up, it will be a huge boon to the beleaguered Jays’ pen.
While talking about the regulars is fun, it’s even more fun to talk about the new members of the Jays. Jason Grilli offers a really nice Stuff profile – with around a league average fastball, but a great amount of separation between his fastball and offspeed/breaking pitchers (over 20″). Exhibit A of this nasty movement – this strike out pitch to close out the game!
Still don’t have a metric to quantify how good those punches to Russell Martin’s gut were, however.
Go Jays!
The next stuff report will be here in 2 weeks.
For more information on the “Stuff Metric”, visit www.mikesonne.ca.