Steward Berroa's first big-league look calls his future with the Blue Jays into question

During the 2024 regular season, the Toronto Blue Jays utilized a ton of different players in an effort to find the winning formula. Seeing as how their end-of-season record wound up being 74-88, it appears they didn't do a very solid job.

Mixing and matching the outfield on most nights was one of the ways the club attempted to switch things up and scrape together wins. Eight different players spent time in left and center field while seven saw time in right field.

One of the few to spend time at all three spots was Steward Berroa, a first-year outfielder whose primary tools coming up through the minor leagues were his defensive prowess and his speed on the bases.

Berroa, 25, came up to the big leagues when the Blue Jays needed a body and there was no high-minors depth left. In Triple-A this year, he hit .281 with an .825 OPS, 10 home runs and 34 stolen bases in 42 tries. He showed off a variety of different tools that combined to be more than enough to catch the eye of the Blue Jays' decision makers.

Berroa's time in the big leagues was brief and uneventful. He made 28 appearances but had just 37 official at-bats, going 7-for-37 (.189) along the way with just one extra-base hit, one RBI, six steals in eight tries and an OPS+ that dipped down to 63, which is 37 percent below league-average. His defense and speed were to put to good use, as he made a total of six appearances in right field, four in left and two in center as a late-inning replacement; as well as nine times as a pinch-runner.

Looking ahead, it's hard to see Berroa's role on the Blue Jays being any more than this. He's going to be competing with the likes of Joey Loperfido, Nathan Lukes and Jonatan Clase in 2025 spring training, but he doesn't seem to have leg up on the competition in any way. That's not meant to be a slight, but he simply doesn't possess the upside that the others do. Even Lukes, who's already 30, does everything Berroa does but with a stronger bat.

This complicates Berroa's future with the Blue Jays. The odds of him making the Opening Day roster next season are very slim, and he could very well be limited to high-minors depth moving forward. Speed and defense are solid attributes to have, but the Blue Jays are getting to a point where they need to consider abandoning some of the defense-over-offense tactics and lean heavier into an offensive way of thinking.

It seems that Berroa is, at his best, a pinch-runner who can play above-average defense at all three outfield positions. As of right now, he's pretty far down the organization's depth chart in the outfield, and it's unlikely he moves up much from now until the start of next season.