2016 Blue Jays are the new franchise strikeout kings
By: Ian Hunter
Canadian Baseball Network
No matter what happens from here on out, the 2016 Toronto Blue Jays are the new strikeout kings. They have the dubious honour of setting a new franchise record for strikeouts in a single season.
The previous record was held by the 2002 Toronto Blue Jays; a team which amassed 1251 strikeouts. But with 12 games remaining, this year’s Blue Jays can only pad their strikeout total at the plate.
It’s problematic, to say the least. At times, the Blue Jays have enjoyed the fruits of being a free-swinging baseball team; scoring runs in clusters, precipitated by big home runs and huge rallies. But when the offense has gone cold, they’ve been nearly non-existent.
This is an issue which has plagued the Blue Jays since day one of the 2016 season. They simply employ far too many swing-happy hitters. And these strikeouts frequently bring rallies to a screeching halt and kill momentum for the Blue Jays altogether.
At least if the hitters were to put the ball in play, there’s a chance a fielder may misplay the ball, or it could narrowly miss an infielder. But a strikeout quite literally takes the bat out of the hands of the hitter.
Top to bottom, the Blue Jays lineup is littered with strikeout-laden hitters. Take your pick; there’s Michael Saunders, who’s on pace to set his own franchise record for strikeouts in a single season. Russell Martin isn’t far behind his Canadian cohort.
And Edwin Encarnacion, Justin Smoak and Josh Donaldson round out a quintet of Blue Jays hitters who have racked up more than 100 strikeouts this season.
It would be one thing if the Blue Jays were simply swinging at everything and striking out at an astronomical rate. Sooner or later, you’d think their swing-happy hitters would eventually run into one. But the Blue Jays also have an alarming number of strikeouts looking to date.
350 caught looking strikeouts so far for the Blue Jays in 2016. That translates to 27.5% of all their strikeouts this year have been called third strikes. To me, not swinging at all seems much worse than at least attempting to make contact.
The Blue Jays’ plate discipline is evident in their pitches per plate appearance, which now sits at 4.03. That leads all 30 teams in MLB.
It’s easy to understand the rationale of the Blue Jays hitters in this scenario; work the count, get the pitch count up on the starter and wait for the right pitch, or at the very least, draw a walk.
But in the process of making an opposing pitcher work, the Blue Jays are seeing perfectly good pitches zoom right by them.
They’re also taking a great deal of borderline pitches. Ordinarily, a hitter would be heralded for their pitch recognition and their ability to grasp the strike zone. But that doesn’t matter much if the next hitter in line decides to take a bunch of hittable pitches and either strikes out or induces weak contact.
I don’t know if this is a new team-wide philosophy which has been adopted for the Blue Jays for the 2016 season, but it clearly isn’t working. Or at the very least, it isn’t working for them anymore. It may have gotten them to the top of the American League East, but it certainly hasn’t kept them there.
Nothing good can ever come from striking out.
The 2016 Blue Jays are who they are. They can’t change their DNA and expect pull hitters to suddenly start hitting to all fields. The Blue Jays aren’t going to ask their best hitters to start laying down sacrifice bunts in an attempt to create some offense.
If the Blue Jays don’t stop laying off perfectly fine pitches in the strike zone or stop wildly swinging at balls outside the zone, the coaching staff may have no other choice than to get creative in order to get some offence going.