Four keys to the Blue Jays reaching another level in May

No way Jose won’t improve

I could point to several individuals on this team and talk about how I expect an improved performance over what we’ve seen so far this season, but Jose Berrios stands out in particular to me.

It hasn’t been all bad for Berrios, as he’s been reasonably effective or better in four of his six starts, and then has had two really rough outings, including an Opening Day clunker that saw him fail to escape the first inning. In all the 28 year old has a 5.34 ERA and a 1.640 WHIP over his first 28.2 innings, and it’s arguably looked even worse next to the All-Star level performances of his rotation mates in Kevin Gausman and Alek Manoah.

Having said all of that, Berrios is too talented of a starter to not figure this out, and we’ve already seen plenty of flashes of what he can do. Over the course of his seven-year big league career he has a 4.08 ERA and a 1.235 WHIP, and he’s trended lower than that as he’s hit his prime years.

The Blue Jays bet on him being a frontline starter when they handed him a seven-year, 131 million dollar extension over the offseason, and I’m not the least bit worried about that contract because of a pair of rocky starts to begin the year. I fully expect Berrios to be the kind of frontline starter that the Jays expected, and for the former Twin to join Gausman and Manoah to make a very formidable threesome at the top of the rotation.

Berrios is just one of several Blue Jays who haven’t quite found their form thus far, but to me he’s one of the easiest to see righting the ship in the not so distant future.