The Toronto Blue Jays‘ 2026 season doesn’t need much of a recap for the Canadian fans.
They know it was nothing like 2025, when the Blue Jays made it to extra innings in Game 7 of the World Series.
The more important question to answer for the future is: Why?
Why was it this much worse? Why did it go so wrong? Why did Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit single-digit home runs? Why, why, why?
The only way for the Blue Jays to ensure that 2027 is better is to answer those questions.
And a recent look at the problems by The Athletic’s Mitch Bannon did reveal one thing.
Blue Jays Problem
The headline of Bannon’s story begins with the words, “The Blue Jays have a type.”
His entire story is about the fact that the Blue Jays really do seek out players who make lots of contact. They don’t want to strike out. They want to put the ball in play.
In modern MLB, that’s certainly not an approach taken by everyone, but it’s what the Blue Jays do.
Even their big slugger, Guerrero, makes contact much more frequently than some of the game’s other big power bats.
“Put simply, the Jays’ theory — which (Ross) Atkins alluded to in his season-ending news conferences — is that contact, more than any other offensive trait, leads to success in October,” Bannon writes. “Obviously lineups require balance, but when swing-and-miss pitchers feature heavily in the playoffs Toronto has bet that bat-to-ball hitters can crack them more consistently than whiff-prone lineups. There are some in the organization who believe the Jays have gone a little too far in the contact direction. But, almost certainly, there are others currently looking at the playoff runs of Cleveland, Milwaukee and Tampa Bay — three of the eight-best contact teams in baseball this year — as validation for their approach.”
This season specifically in Toronto, one thing about that approach went wrong.
Explaining Vladdy, Ernie Struggles
Two of the Blue Jays’ heroes in the 2025 postseason were Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Ernie Clement. Both took big steps back in 2026.
Bannon includes a key note about them in his story:
“The chase rates of Clement, Guerrero, Nathan Lukes and Andrés Giménez all rose in 2026. Each still made contact well above average, but that contact resulted in grounders, not game-changing doubles.”
Chase rate is the percentage of time a hitter swings at a pitch outside the strike zone.
And when bad contact-makers swing at those pitches, they whiff. It’s a strike, but nothing more.
When the Blue Jays’ contact wizards swing at those pitches, they hit them. They just don’t turn into hard contact because they’re tougher pitches to hit. Usually, they turn into outs.
So while there’s no guarantee the Blue Jays can push their players back in a better direction in that regard, it’s at least somewhat clear where there was a problem. Toronto was too good at hitting bad pitches weakly this season. It’s an area they can aim to improve going forward.
Blue Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Ernie Clement Had Same Problem in 2026