Blue Jays: The important unanswered questions from this season

What do they have in big Nate?

Blue Jays fans have been spoiled with much anticipated MLB debuts over the last few seasons, and they added another top prospect to the list in 2020.

Nate Pearson finally took a big league mound, and at times he flashed the raw ability that we’ve all been reading about for the last few years. He hit triple digits on the radar gun with ease, threw some nasty breaking balls, and looked ready to join Hyun Jin Ryu at the top of the Jays’ rotation for the next several years.

Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how the big league career of Pearson has begun, at least not yet. He had his 2020 campaign disrupted by a flexor strain injury, limiting him to just five regular season appearances, including four starts. They came with mixed results in a small sample size, and I really don’t think it’s that helpful to read into his numbers much at all. If I could sum it up, he looked much better than the numbers would indicate, but it’s clear there is still work to be done before he’s ready to be a MLB ace.

I have no doubt that he’ll be in the rotation plans for 2021, as he should be, but it’s really hard to project what the Blue Jays might get from the 24-year-old next season. The most important thing will be keeping him healthy, and I’m sure there’s already a draft of a pitching regimen for next year sitting somewhere on a coach’s and/or trainer’s laptop. It’s likely fair to assume that Pearson will be on some sort of innings limit in 2020, but only time will tell how much they’ll hold him back.

In an ideal world, Pearson would have shown himself ready to take on the #2 starter’s role for 2021 with his work this season. He may be still perform to that level when the time comes, but if the Blue Jays are serious about competing again, they likely need to add at least one more high-arm.

What can we expect from Vlad Jr. next year?

It wasn’t the sophomore season that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. or the Blue Jays were hoping for in 2020, but there were still some positive strides for the 21-year-old.

First and foremost, it’s significant that he managed to stay healthy all season, even if the schedule only had 60 games, and the Blue Jays handled him with “kid gloves” at times. Still, it was encouraging to see him avoid the Injured List, especially when even he admitted that his conditioning was still a bit of an issue.

With the benefit of a full off-season to prepare for his work at first base, and hopefully some lessons reinforced about conditioning, I am cautiously optimistic that we could see big things from the young slugger in 2021. It feels like we’ve been saying that for a few years now, and he still hasn’t lived up to the hype that he arrived in the big leagues with, but let’s not forget that he’s still only 21 years old, and most players his age haven’t even sniffed the big leagues.

Having said that, next season will be an important one for the former top prospect in baseball, especially as the Blue Jays look to take another leap toward being a contender. Vlad Jr. has flashed his talent at the highest level, and he ended the regular season off on a positive note, but he needs to find more consistency, and frankly, more power to his mighty right-handed bat.

Whether that means he needs to concentrate on conditioning, launch angle, or something else altogether, it feels like next year will be an important one in determining his legacy, and the future of this team. If he’s at his best, he has the talent to be one of the best hitters in the American League, and adding that kind of bat to what we saw in 2020 would make a significant difference.

Will Vlad Jr. make that leap in 2020? I’ll admit that I’ve been extremely frustrated with the youngster at times over the last couple of seasons, but I’ll still bet on him in 2021 and beyond, and I’m sure the Blue Jays feel the same way.

Is the defence good enough?

There have been plenty of times that I’ve talked about how the Blue Jays are one, or maybe two players away from having a complete lineup going forward. There’s a great deal of talent between the bats of Vlad Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio, Teoscar Hernandez, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Rowdy Tellez, and more, and I expect that they’ll continue to score a lot of runs over the next few seasons.

While scoring runs may not be that much of an issue for this group most of the time, preventing them has been a different story altogether. Some of that is on the pitching staff, but there’s no denying that the Blue Jays’ defence is a current weakness.

Keeping things as simple as I can, here are the dWAR ratings for Blue Jay starters in 2020, again keeping in mind that each sample size comes over 60 games or less.

• Danny Jansen= 0.2 dWAR
• Biggio= 0.0 dWAR
• Bichette= 0.0 dWAR
• Hernandez= -0.3 dWAR
• Tellez= -0.3 dWAR
• Gurriel Jr. = -0.5 dWAR
• Randal Grichuk= -0.7 dWAR
• Guerrero Jr.= -0.7 dWAR

That’s not exactly what you want to see.

Jansen has shown himself capable of handling defensive duties behind the plate, and Biggio has been a tremendous asset as a super-utility player. Bichette is the only other player on the positive side of the ledger, and while he’s been serviceable as a big league shortstop, I’m sure he’d be the first to tell you that he still has improvements to make.

After that it’s a bit of a concern. Tellez didn’t play a whole lot of defence in 2020, but his limited stats tell you why. Even with Vlad Jr. struggling to make the transition to first base, Tellez didn’t exactly steal the starts on defence away from him. I do believe that Vlad Jr. will perform better at first base in 2021, but we’ll see what kind of work he puts in over the off-season to make that happen.

The outfield is the area of the clearest need of defensive help, but that could come from an in-house option next season. Jonathan Davis is likely the organization’s best defensive outfielder right now, and my guess is he’s the front-runner to win the fourth outfielder’s job for next spring. If that’s the case, he’ll improve the defence on the days that he’s starting, and could and should serve as a late-game defensive replacement as well. That said, the Blue Jays will need to see continued improvement from their starting trio, just as they did on offence this year.

I’m not sure that it’s an area the Blue Jays will do anything drastic about to address just yet, and hopefully the improvement can come from within.

Do they have the right man for the job?

Despite the fact that the Blue Jays took the leap from a 67-win ball club in 2019 to a .533 winning percentage and a playoff appearance in 2020, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a lot of people who want to give the credit to Charlie Montoyo.

In some ways it feels like it’s tough to argue with success, but I know that I’m not alone in feeling a little different about that when it comes to the Blue Jays’ manager. There were plenty of examples of “head-scratcher” decisions made throughout the regular season, and it even continued in the playoffs when Matt Shoemaker was pulled after just three innings and 35 pitches. Things worked out fine in the case, but there were many other times when you could argue that Montoyo cost the Blue Jays a win.

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There’s no doubt in my mind that Montoyo will be back in the dugout again in 2021, and regardless of how much you dislike him, he’s earned that much. Having said that, I feel like next season will be an important year for the 54-year-old, as the pressure to produce should really start now that this team has tasted the playoffs, even in an expanded playoff format.

It’s pretty clear that Montoyo is a big fan of modern analytics, as evidenced by decisions like the Shoemaker one referenced above, and my guess is that’s a big reason why the front office hired him in the first place. However, there comes a time when a skipper has to rely on their experience and their baseball knowledge, and Montoyo has decade’s of experience to draw from. I don’t know that we’ve seen much of that from him in his first two years at the helm, and personally, I’m hoping to see him rely a little less on the printouts and more on his own gut.

We’ll see what next season brings, but as I’ve already mentioned, I think it’s an important year for the Blue Jays’ skipper. This team should be ready to win next year, and there will be less time and patience for coaching blunders. It remains to be seen how Montoyo will respond, but I’m less confident than I should be for a team that just had such a great season. I’m not so sure that’s a great sign.

Did I cover everything? Other than wondering how the pitching staff will fill out next season, what other big questions do you see facing the Blue Jays now that this season has concluded?