Blue Jays Week In Review: The good, the bad and the noteworthy for April 6th

The Good, The Bad, and The Noteworthy for April 6th

The Good: Starters settling in

Last week, the Blue Jays starting rotation threw a combined 34 innings and gave up just 9 earned runs with 30 strikeouts. They only allowed three home runs – and two of those came off Bowden Francis in one outing.

José Berríos, Easton Lucas, and Chris Bassitt didn’t allow any long balls during their outings, and Berríos and Bassitt went into the sixth inning in their starts while Lucas tossed five scoreless innings.

Francis gave up six hits on Sunday (the most of any Blue Jays starter this week), which shows how strong the staff truly is.

There was legitimate concern about how things would shake out in the rotation after Max Scherzer's injury, but every pitcher in Toronto's starting five held their own and gave the Blue Jays a chance to win.

Toronto’s starters have given up 20 earned runs this year, which is 12th in the league, but 40% of that came in two games against Baltimore to begin the year. Toronto’s starting staff ranks third in innings pitched and fifth in WHIP (1.09) ten games into the year.    

The Bad: Hitting in the clutch

The Blue Jays scored 17 runs this week, an average of 2.8 per game. They put up back-to-back five spots against the Nationals to start the week but managed just three runs in three games at Citi Field.

Hitting home runs usually solves a lot of problems... but they've only hit two home runs over the last seven days. The entire team isn't getting the ball into the air enough; 40.4% of the balls they've put in play have been on the ground compared to just 20.9% in the air.

If you aren’t going to hit home runs then you better be able to hit when there are guys on base, and right now the Blue Jays are hitting just .231 with runners in scoring position.

The Yankees, Orioles, Rays are all in the top-ten in the league in RISP, while the Boston Red Sox .351 OBP with RISP is fifth-best.

The Blue Jays weren’t able to manufacture any comebacks this week as well.

The Blue Jays took an early lead and never trailed in their three wins over the Nationals, while they fell behind in two of their three losses against the Mets. As a team, the Jays are slashing .205/.321/.304 when trailing.