Surprising stat shows Blue Jays getting extremely lucky with opponents' ABS failures

Not a lot has gone right for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2026. Between the amount of injuries piling up and the losses following suit, the Blue Jays 2026 season has not been what the team or it's fans expected to this point. One area of strength though has been their pitching.

While it isn't perfect, especially the back end of the rotation with Eric Lauer recently being DFA'd, the Blue Jays have the sixth best K/9 rate in the league at 9.06. Combined with an xERA of 3.82, which also ranks ninth, Toronto's hurlers have largely gotten the job done.

But they may be aided by the Automated Ball-Strike system in ways they didn't expect, leading to some of that success. While they haven't been great at getting calls overturned for their pitching staff, they also haven't suffered from teams challenging them too often either. In fact, they have gotten away with so many pitches that should've been challenged, that they are actually leading the league in the number of strikes they have stolen on hitters.

Opponents aren't challenging the Blue Jays pitchers enough - which has benefitted Toronto

According to CodifyBaseball on X (formerly Twitter) the Blue Jays lead in the number of pitches they have thrown out of the zone that were called strikes and not challenged by the batting team.

Going into Tuesday's game against the Tampa Bay Rays, the Blue Jays had 141 pitches that could have been challenged and subsequently over turned. But the batters decided not to tap their helmets, allowing Toronto's pitching staff to keep that called strike. The stat doesn't tell us how many of those calls were on strike three of the at-bat, but this could be a reason for why the Blue Jays pitching staff have racked up so many strikeouts this season.

Dylan Cease is third in the league with 66 strikeouts while Kevin Gausman has 48 through his first nine starts. Jeff Hoffman and Louis Varland are already at 30+ as well out of the bullpen. Another interesting angle to this stat is that the Blue Jays are one of six teams that hasn't had a pitcher challenge a call yet, relying on catchers Alejandro Kirk, Tyler Heinemann and Brandon Valenzuela to make that call for them.

But the Blue Jays' catchers only have 20 correct calls overturned out of 38 challenges, giving them a 3.8 wC-Rvw - which rates the total value of catchers challenges for a team. The league leaders are the Colorado Rockies who have a 7.3 wC-Rvw with 36 correct calls overturned on 57 challenges.

Regardless of the Blue Jays' catchers being below average on their challenges this season, they haven't really needed the assistance since they seem to be fooling the hitters at the plate altogether. The lack of challenges by the opposition points to some the Blue Jays pitchers getting close enough to the strike zone that it doesn't feel like it's worth challenging. As long as the Blue Jays pitchers keep that up, they'll continue to steal strikes in an era where it has become increasingly difficult to do so.

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