Using advanced stats to see which Blue Jays could improve regress

Jose Berrios

After earning himself a massive seven-year extension from the Blue Jays this past offseason, Jose Berrios has had some serious struggles to start the 2022 season. His 75 ERA+ is the worst among qualified pitchers in the American League, and his xERA of 6.56 ranks dead last in MLB according to FanGraphs. To make things worse, his Baseball Savant page is not a pleasant sight, with almost every single one of his statcast metrics sitting right near the bottom of the league. To put it lightly, Berrios’ advanced numbers are about as bad as they could be. So what does that mean for Berrios throughout the rest of the season?

Ignoring all the peripheral numbers, knowing the type of pitcher Berrios has been throughout his career, I see no reason not to expect Berrios to bounce back to being an at least above-average player. In his most recent start, Berrios let up a two-run homer in the first inning but bounced back finishing the day with seven innings of two-run baseball to go along with a career-high 13 strikeouts. Trying to use his advanced numbers to project his season makes it much tougher. Berrios hasn’t simple been unlucky this season, he’s just been bad.

FIP (which only looks at the three true outcomes) is always a good metric to look at when seeing how a pitcher might project over a full season, but this season he’s struggled to keep the ball in the yard, all well walking more batters and striking out fewer. This is all very concerning when trying to project him for the rest of the campaign and when trying to glean positives from this, the only thing there is that he really can’t get any worse. I would try not to read too much into this, because like I said, Berrios has proven to be a solid pitcher in years past, but the picture that his peripherals paint right now is not a pretty one.