The Toronto Blue Jays won Friday night in the series opener versus the Seattle Mariners, before falling on Saturday and Sunday to lose the series. The 2025 American League Championship Series rematch did not quite have the same fireworks as the original for the Blue Jays.
The team scored two runs Friday but was blanked in the final two games as Seattle won 11-0 and 4-0 respectively. It was Toronto’s first time being shut out two games in a row this season.
Sunday’s loss dropped them to 42-48, third place in the American League East and 11 and ½ games behind the first-place Tampa Bay Rays. It may be getting late early for the defending AL Champions.
After the game on Sunday, manager John Schneider shared his thoughts about why the offense could not produce. The quote was reported by Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.
The Blue Jays offense mustered only four hits and two walks across Saturday and Sunday. They struck out 14 times total in the two games, six of them on fastballs.
On Saturday the lineup faced Logan Gilbert, on Sunday they faced Emerson Hancock. Both have an average four-seam fastball velocity of >95 MPH, and both feature multiple different types of fastballs such as sinkers, cutters and splitters.
Toronto has only three hitters on the roster (Kazuma Okamoto, Ernie Clement, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.) that have a positive run value versus four-seam fastballs this season (h/t Baseball Savant). Run value measures how valuable hitters are against certain pitches.
Schneider mentioned fastballs as the main culprit for the dreary offense in Seattle, but there were also some chase issues on offspeed pitches. Guerrero Jr. in particular chased outside the zone for strike three a few times during the weekend.
Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Toronto is slugging .385 as a team this season, 25th in MLB. Their gritty, drawn-out style of offense from last year has completely reversed itself this year. Now 90 games into the season, something in the team’s approach will need to change as soon as possible.
The Jays offense has been outmatched by just about every pitch this season, but it is true that fastballs have given them a lot of trouble. Their next chance to correct that will be at the San Francisco Giants, Monday at 9:45 p.m. ET.
