This story was excerpted from Keegan Matheson's Blue Jays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
NEW YORK -- We¡¯re just 10 days into the Blue Jays¡¯ season, but after months spent waiting for games that counted, that¡¯s enough to grab onto.
Yes, it¡¯s early, but that¡¯s typically a crutch reserved for losing teams and struggling players. The game you¡¯ll watch today counts just as much as those games down the stretch in September and what these Blue Jays players are doing now, even the oddities, carry just as much weight.
Let¡¯s look at five numbers that matter going into this weekend in New York:
George Springer¡¯s exit velocities:
First, the good news. Springer was in clear pain when he left Saturday night¡¯s game against the Mets after slamming into the right-field wall, but he¡¯s been diagnosed with lower back spasms and won¡¯t even need an MRI. Everyone can exhale, for now.
Now, the really good news: Bring up Springer¡¯s Baseball Savant page and look at all that red.
His average exit velocity going into this weekend against the Mets was 95.7 mph, well above his career averages and near the top of baseball. There¡¯s a puzzle to put together here, too. Early on, Springer also whiffs on more pitches than he typically does, but it looks like Springer is doing a better job of finding the right pitch and letting it rip. That will lead to a few empty at-bats along the way, but the payoff and upside are incredible.
The most encouraging early indicator? When you look at where Springer is hitting the ball, 35.3% of the balls he¡¯s put in play have been pulled in the air. Yes, it¡¯s early, but that¡¯s more than double his career average of 16.1%. If he keeps doing that with a little extra thump behind the ball, he can keep this rolling.
Anthony Santander¡¯s career OPS in March/April:
It¡¯s .656. The Blue Jays knew that coming in and Santander isn¡¯t likely to turn into a hot starter at age 30. If he were a young prospect coming up, these slow starts would be worth a conversation, but that conversation has already happened for years in Baltimore.
This is who Santander is, and by the time May rolls around and he starts to heat up, you¡¯ll forget April ever happened. Santander¡¯s career OPS in May is .825 and manager John Schneider sees a hitter who is ¡°just a tick off¡± right now, so he¡¯s close.
Andrés Giménez's setup:
Part of Statcast¡¯s fancy new bat tracking metrics allows us to see how a player is setting up in the box compared to prior years. For Gim¨¦nez, this shows us that he¡¯s now standing with his feet closer together (37.8 inches last year, 29.2 inches this year) and using a more open stance (3¡ã last year, 19¡ã this year).
Gim¨¦nez is also swinging harder ¡ and doing just about everything better, but it starts with his stance. A 161-pound infielder is able to launch home runs because he taps into the full athleticism of his body, and it appears that this new setup is giving Gim¨¦nez a better starting point to uncoil his swing in the right moments. When a player is suddenly surging, it¡¯s important to have a ¡°why¡±, and this is a fine start.
Bo Bichette¡¯s contact rates:
Bichette is already a contact machine when he¡¯s healthy, but he¡¯s taken that to another level. Coming into the weekend, Bichette is making contact with 93.8% of pitches in the zone, an absurd number and well above the league average of 82%.
That¡¯s a fine start, but Bichette is also pulling the ball more than he ever has and is keeping it off the ground. He¡¯s also swinging at far fewer first pitches than he ever has (just 22.2%). It would be one thing if Bichette were simply sneaking a few more balls through the hole, but there are a half-dozen noticeably encouraging numbers coming from him early on. That¡¯s when this gets really exciting.
Springer¡¯s three starts in center
If you¡¯d given me an over/under of 0.5 starts in center field for George Springer this season, I would have taken the under.
Instead, I would have projected Springer sliding over to center a handful of times late in games as the Blue Jays pinch-hit for the bottom third of their lineup, but three starts through the first nine games? You couldn¡¯t have convinced me that would happen a week ago.
Schneider described this in an interesting way. Back in January, he was expecting to play Springer in center a good amount, but drifted from that idea through camp until coming back to it recently. Seeing Springer back out there was all Schneider needed, and most important of all? It¡¯s another example of the Blue Jays prioritizing the best nine hitters, then figuring out the defense part next.