Right now, the Blue Jays have a good rotation to start the season. With Alek Manoah, Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios, Chris Bassitt and Yusei Kikuchi, the club could do a lot worse.
And we must not forget Hyun-Jin Ryu, who could land during the season.
But the problem? The rotation is fragile. If only one member of the top-4 were to get injured, Yusei Kikuchi and Mitch White would be there on a regular basis, which is too much.
Because the club doesn’t have a lot of depth right now, that also means the top four pitchers will have to be consistent.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t really have any doubts about Manoah. He’s done so well since his Major League debut and he hasn’t had a bad year two.
Gausman? He has adapted well to Toronto. He could slow down, but I don’t necessarily believe it.
Bassitt, meanwhile, is one of the most consistent pitchers in recent years. What he offered in Oakland and New York should be transposed in the Queen City.
But Berrios? Last season made big doubts settle.
What is hard to understand, in his case, is that he was probably the pitcher towards whom I had the least doubts at this time last year. After all, one wondered what Gausman, Manoah, Ryu, and Kikuchi would bring…but Berrios seemed like a stabilizing force.
He had done well when he arrived in 2021 at the trade deadline and he had avoided contractual uncertainty by signing a seven-year contract.
But in 2022, he faltered.
When we look at his career numbers, we can clearly see that since 2017, he has maintained an earned run average between 3.48 and 4.00. His ERA+ showed that he was still 11-25% better than the baseball average.
But in 2022, that was not the case. In his first full season in town, he posted his worst numbers since his rookie season.
He also pitched less, considering the fact that Charlie Montoyo and John Schneider often had to retire him before the seventh inning. He was, however, labeled as a guy with 190 innings a year when he arrived in Toronto.
Did the pressure of being the #1 pitcher for a club like Toronto stifle him? I do not know. For that, he will have to be more successful via his fastball, in particular.
But it is especially between the two ears that it must happen. Pete Walker and John Schneider need to remind him that he is a good pitcher.
