Toronto Blue Jays 2025 preview
The Toronto Blue Jays are entering a very important year for the direction of the franchise. This team might be good enough to punch a ticket to the Postseason Tournament of Variance, but then what? After not coming to terms on a contract extension with Vladimir Guerrero Jr., where will the Blue Jays go from here?
Four pitchers in the rotation are on the wrong side of 30 and two will be free agents this fall and another becomes a free agent after next season. George Springer has more than aged out of his prime. Bo Bichette hits free agency after this season. Reshuffling the deck makes a ton of sense, but it may take completely cleaning house because I don’t think that this front office has been terribly effective.
Top MLB Resources:
The Blue Jays have three playoff appearances since 2016 and haven’t won a game in any of those three Wild Card series. One of them came during the COVID-shortened season. Toronto has one division title since 1993 and has finished second on only three occasions. It is tough to compete in the AL East, but this is a major market with a lot of financial resources that have been mismanaged.
After the team’s first last-place finish since 2013, the Blue Jays have to be honest about where they are. The future of the franchise is likely dependent on trading Guerrero, Bichette, Chris Bassitt, Max Scherzer, and maybe even Kevin Gausman this summer. But, if they are on the outskirts of contention or very much in the throes of the playoff chase, will the front office actually be able to pull the trigger and punt on a postseason chance?
If nothing else, it should be a fascinating season north of the border.
2025 Toronto Blue Jays Odds
(odds from DraftKings as of Feb. 26)
World Series: +6000
AL Pennant: +3000
AL East: +1500
Win Total: 78.5 (-115/-105)
Make Playoffs: Yes +285 / No -360
Toronto Blue Jays Preview: Offense
Toronto finished 15th in wOBA at .307 and 13th in wRC+ at 101, so this was merely a league-average offense, even though Guerrero was one of the 10 most valuable hitters in baseball. Vladito posted a .323/.396/.544 slash with a .398 wOBA and a 165 wRC+. Nobody else with more than 400 plate appearances posted a wRC+ better than 99. Some part-timers and platooners were able to finish on the plus side of average, but no regulars outside of the impending free agent.
Guerrero hit 30 homers, as the Blue Jays had nobody else with more than 19 and finished 26th in long balls overall. The Blue Jays were also 27th in stolen bases. For a team that only struck out 20.3% of the time, which was the sixth-best mark in baseball, it is astonishing how poor they were on offense. Their .283 BABIP as a team didn’t help, but a lack of contact authority was to blame.
The Blue Jays were 25th in Hard Hit% and 22nd in Barrel%. When you consider that Vlad had a 54.8% Hard Hit% and a 13.7% Barrel%, you can deduce just how poorly the rest of the lineup did in those departments. Anthony Santander adds a power dimension alongside Vlad, as he banged 44 homers last season for the Orioles, but there doesn’t appear to be a whole lot more upside in this season’s lineup.
Andres Gimenez is an elite defender and Platinum Glove winner, but a poor hitter with a major lack of contact quality. He’s the only other everyday addition to the lineup aside from Santander, so the Jays are betting on in-house options to bounce back and/or stay healthier. Bichette hit some balls hard, but he was limited to 81 games and only had a 71 wRC+. Springer had the worst offensive season of his career and now heads into his age-35 campaign going in the wrong direction in a lot of areas.
It’s entirely possible that Will Wagner and Joey Loperfido, acquired from Houston in the Yusei Kikuchi deal, provide infusions of offense. Wagner is a .297/.402/.441 hitter in his minor league career and Loperfido has a .281/.377/.496 slash in 290 minor league games. If the Blue Jays can get one or both of those guys to pop this season, this offense has a chance at moving above league average.
This will remain a very solid defensive team with great glovemen in Gimenez and Dalton Varsho, but offensive upside is limited for Varsho (and he’s coming off rotator cuff surgery) and Alejandro Kirk, a solid defensive backstop, hasn’t developed with the bat the way I thought he would. Spencer Horwitz was a homegrown talent and a good hitter last season, but he’s now in Pittsburgh after being traded to Cleveland in the Gimenez deal.
To be honest, the biggest problem for the Jays is that once they’ve gotten guys to the big leagues, they’ve stagnated or not panned out as expected. So, I don’t have a lot of hope that they can extract more out of a lot of their guys than they have already been getting in recent seasons. New hitting coach David Popkins seems to be preaching slugging percentage above all, so I’m curious to see how that works.
Toronto Blue Jays Preview: Pitching
While Guerrero willed the offense to something respectable, nobody was able to do that on the pitching side last year for the Blue Jays. They finished 22nd in ERA and 26th in FIP. Given that five pitchers made at least 21 starts, health wasn’t the problem, as is often the case with teams that have seasons like the Blue Jays had.
To be fair, Jose Berrios had a 3.60 ERA, but it came with a 4.74 xERA and a 4.72 FIP, as he greatly benefitted from the defense behind him and some good sequencing luck. He saw regression in both his strikeout and home run rates and those are things that I was worried about going into last season. Coming to fruition meant that he led the team in starts and innings pitched, but finished fifth in fWAR.
It was Gausman who led the Jays with 2.9 fWAR. He had a 3.83 ERA with a 3.77 FIP. He and fellow vet Bassitt each made 31 starts. Bassitt had a 4.16 ERA with a 4.52 xERA and a 4.08 FIP. I think both guys are absolutely trade candidates this July and I actually thought there was maybe a chance that Gausman would be traded this winter.
While those guys are pretty projectable and should be average or better, what the Blue Jays really need is to see continued growth from Bowden Francis and Yariel Rodriguez. I don’t think Scherzer has much in the tank anymore, so Francis, who worked 103.2 innings with a 3.30 ERA, 3.39 xERA, and a 4.36 FIP is a big piece of the puzzle. He had multiple starts where he took a no-hitter deep into the game and did extremely well in the walk rate department. He does need to cut back on the homers.
Rodriguez, who was oddly used throughout the season, ended up with 21 starts covering just 86.2 innings. He had control issues, but at least flashed some bat-missing ability, which is in short supply for this rotation with Kikuchi gone and others aging. I’m not sure what his role will be at the outset and if he’ll go to the minors if he can’t beat Francis for the last rotation spot.
I like Jake Bloss and the risk-free grab of Ryan Yarbrough could be fun. I wish Ricky Tiedemann wasn’t losing out on a year of development recovering from surgery, as he could’ve been a fun arm.
This is a solid bullpen, even without Jordan Romano. It is a little right-handed-heavy, so we’ll see if another southpaw emerges. The top arms are all likely to be rather good and the bullpen will do a better job of missing bats than the starters.
Toronto Blue Jays Player to Watch
SP Jake Bloss
I’m really shocked at the return that the Jays got for Kikuchi, as they got Bloss, Loperfido, and Wagner in that deal. Bloss has elite Extension, so his 93 mph fastball plays up a bit in velo and he’s got a bit more extreme tilt to his arm angle. The raw spin rates on his curveball, sweeper, and slider should be good to work with going forward. Pitch efficiency is a bit of a problem, as he hasn’t really shown a consistent put-away pitch.
But, the Jays got three players with a lot of contractual control for Kikuchi, who they were never going to sign. He’s a cold-weather college arm that didn’t play at a premier program (Georgetown), so the rapid ascent up the ranks has been a bit of a surprise. But, that speaks to his pitchability and the depth of his arsenal. Now it’s up to the Jays to find something that gets swings and misses.
Toronto Blue Jays Season Win Total Odds & Prediction
I have a pretty good idea of what this roster will look like going into the All-Star Break, but what does it look like after? Ross Atkins is in a great place to add a lot of prospect and MLB-ready talent to the organization, much like he did in last year’s Kikuchi deal. How far do the Jays have to be out for him to do what I think is the smart move? And if he doesn’t, and August goes poorly, how much does this house of cards fold down the stretch?
This win total seems to be priced pretty fairly, in that this could be a team tracking towards .500 or better early in the season, but an old rotation and a lot of impending departures make the second half a little bit of a crapshoot. It is hard to see a scenario in which Toronto blows past this win total, especially with the depth of the division. I think they’re more likely to go Under the total and maybe clear it by a lot when the sell-off begins.
Pick: Under 78.5
