Sinking the Jays Slug

There is almost too much going on at once to attempt to explain the Blue Jays decline this year. The start of the year was chaos with injuries to Kirk, Barger, and Springer, Hoffman and Little throwing away games from the bullpen, and Nathan Lukes' battle with vertigo. The bullpen and injuries (and the vertigo) have largely stabilized since then, but the team has not. The offence has experienced a consistent and massive decline relative to 2025 and pre-season projections, with a large portion of the decline concentrated among the Jays core returning bats in Vlad, Kirk, Springer (who has improved recently), and Varsho. Now we are here, on July 27, where the Jays' offence is among the bottom three teams in the league in almost every surface-level and advanced metric for offensive performance including: Runs, OBP, BB%, SLG, ISO, wOBA, wRC+, Barrel %, Hard Hit %, Exit Velocity, xSLG, and xwOBA. This was a team that fourth in runs and wRC+, first in OBP, seventh in SLG, and fifth in xWOBA in 2025.

Attempting to explain this decline is not easy due to the sheer range of things that have gone wrong at both the player- and team-level. Some players who were expected to provide offence, like Barger, have been out for essentially the entire season. Other key bats appear to be experiencing physical drop-offs that are likely affecting their offence. Varsho's bat speed has decreased by almost 3 mph since 2025. Kirk's bat speed has decreased by over 1 mph. At least in Kirk's case, it is plausible that this is directly linked to an injury (broken thumb) that happened this year.

However, the decline is not limited to these players with physical explanations. Some players, like Vlad, are not showing any markers of physical degradation to explain the drop in performance. The lineup as a whole is experiencing consistent issues affecting almost every player. For example, the team has kept its high contact rate from 2025 while dropping off a cliff in terms of walk rate and OBP. This issue is even more notable when Jays hitters are ahead in the count. The Jays are second last in the league this year with a .894 OPS when they are ahead in the count. They were fourth in the league in these situations last year with a 1.018 OPS. This .124 decrease in OPS is about 1.5 times greater than their total OPS drop from last year. Interestingly, the Jays drop-off when behind in the count is not nearly as significant.

This is a failure to take advantage of situations where the Jays' hitters should have the upper hand, and drilling down further shows this is a big problem for the Jays' underperforming bats this year. The Jays have gone from one of the best teams in hitting heart-zone (the area where hitters typically do the most damage) 4-seam fastballs in 2025 to one of the worst in 2026. The league average SLG on pitches in this zone has been around .550 the past two years. The Jays slugged .542 on these pitches last year but are only slugging .476 in 2026, good for second last in the league. This issue is particularly stark when you look at heart-zone 4-seamers against Vlad, Kirk and Springer:

• Vlad: .681 to .438 SLG
• Springer: .886 to .444 SLG
• Kirk: .435 to .250 SLG

The issue is not limited to 4-seamers in the heart-zone. Vlad, Springer, Kirk and Varsho collectively slugged .545 and hit 32 home runs off 4-seamers across all zones last year. This year they are slugging .408 and have only hit 9 home runs against 4-seamers (roughly a 14 home run pace, albeit with some injuries). Looking at Vlad in particular, he did most of his damage off 4-seamers last year. He hit 7 home runs and slugged .547. This year he has hit ONE home run off 4-seamers and is slugging .438 (interestingly the same as his heart-zone 4-seam SLG). While his slugging across almost all pitches has dropped off, losing the ability to slug the 4-seam is massive given the number of 4-seams he sees and his past reliance on slugging it for his power profile.

Now this is where it gets really interesting. I had been looking for an explanation for Vlad's power outage, but his physical and mechanical metrics are largely similar since last year — certainly not different enough to indicate a clear cause for his decline. The commonality across almost all returning Jays players, and particularly these four core bats, in hard hit rate led me to question whether there is a more widespread change behind the offence's fall-off.

Each player has their own unique causes to be sure, but what is consistent across all four is a significant year-over-year rise in sinker usage by opposing pitchers. In 2025, the average sinker usage across the league was 15.5%. This has risen to 16.6% in 2026, so there is a league-wide increase in sinker usage. However, the rise against the Jays is much greater than the league-wide increase. Here is the change in sinkers and 4-seam fastballs faced by Jays players from 2025 to 2026:

Opposing pitchers have decreased their 4-seam usage by moderate to significant amounts across all these returning players and have significantly increased their sinker usage against all these players (other than for the left-handed batting Giménez). This above-league-average increase in sinker usage against the Jays is by far the most significant change in pitch usage against the Jays this year relative to 2025. For Vlad and Kirk, the sinker is now the pitch they face most frequently. Vlad, Kirk, and Springer are all now in the top 20 in the league in sinker usage against (min. 100 sinkers faced), a significant rise from last year.

This trend is even more concentrated in looking at the pitches that opposing pitchers are throwing to Jays hitters to start at-bats. The returning right-handed core has experienced a substantial increase in first-pitch sinkers in 2026, with an almost 10% increase in first-pitch sinkers for Vlad and Kirk.

The impact of this increase in first-pitch sinkers is notable for Vlad. In 2026, first pitch sinkers have a 64.3% strike rate for Vlad and a 37.1% swing rate. First pitch 4-seams against him have a lower strike rate (58.9%) and a much lower swing rate of (22.2%). The net effect of this difference shows up most notably in the length of Vlad's plate appearances and his walk rate. In 2026, Vlad's sees on average 4.3 pitches in at-bats started with a first-pitch fastball, but only 3.2 pitches in at-bats started with a sinker. 23% of his at-bats started with a sinker end in one pitch, relative to only 4.4% for at-bats started with a 4-seam. His walk-rate on at-bats started with a 4-seam is 14.4%, but this drops off a cliff to 3.5% in at-bats started with a sinker. Interestingly, his wOBA is still higher in plate appearances started with a sinker vs. 4-seam, but his OBP is lower in plate appearances started with a sinker. As such, it looks like opposing teams are accepting that while Vlad still might do damage on sinkers, starting him a first-pitch sinker is more likely than a first-pitch 4-seam to end his at bat earlier, get him behind in the count, and keep him from getting on base.

Disentangling the possible impact of this sinker increase is difficult and hard to clearly identify with the statistics. It is possible that the league has identified increased sinker usage as a way to take away the 4-seam fastball as a main source of slug for the Jays power hitters or otherwise disrupt the Jays' hitting plan, particularly for the bats that the Jays rely on for slug. In any event, this cannot be the only thing wrong with the offence in 2026, but it offers at least a partial explanation for a team-wide drop-off in the main power areas from 2025, rather than every player simply regressing or each player suffering from unique issues that happen to be manifesting the same way.