A Look at Stat leaders from the Blue Jays down to the DSL Blue Jays
We’re nearly at the 100 game mark of the Blue Jays 2017 MLB regular season. It’s time for another look at the organizational leaderboard. Here’s what we’re updating (from the end of May).
The batting stats we’ve used are hits, doubles, triples, home runs and stolen bases, and the rate stats OBP, wRC+ (considered the best measure of a batter. 100 is average) and BB/K.
The pitching stats: ERA, FIP, starters’ ERA and FIP (since relievers would usually lead in straight up ERA and FIP), HR/9, GB%, and K-BB% (strikeout percentage minus walk percentage).
Batters:
(the bolded names are the organization’s full season leader in the respective category. Not really fair to compare with short season)
(cut off was half of a team’s total games played. Stats are from yesterday and mined from Fangraphs)
(*Ryan McBroom actually leads AA with 12 HR but was recently traded)
(*Danny Jansen has a higher OBP than Jonathan Davis or Connor Panas but Jansen doesn’t meet the cutoff of A+ or AA due to his mid-season promotion and injury)
Justin Smoak continues to dominate Blue Jays’ batting categories. Smoak’s taken over the OBP category as well. Kevin Pillar has nabbed the doubles lead from the injured Devon Travis.
Roemon Fields has continued to surprise and turn heads in AAA. Fields’ has 33 SB in total, between two levels, to claim the organizational lead by a wide margin. Rafael Lopez too has come out of nowhere this season to wrest control of the HR and wRC+ categories.
In AA, Anthony Alford has fallen off the leaderboard due to his time spent on the DL, rehabbing, and with the Blue Jays. Jonathan Davis has quietly been putting together a very solid season. The only player remaining on the AA leaderboard since May is Tim Lopes.
Max Pentecost has maintained his hold on the HR category, and added the wRC+ category despite time lost to injury. Cavan Biggio, D.J Davis and Connor Panas have made their marks as well.
Single A Lansing has been dealt a massive offensive blow losing Vladimir Guerrero Jr, Jake Thomas, Bradley Jones and Bo Bichette to promotions. But they still have Edward Olivares who appears to be developing a deadly combination of power and speed. Though now in Dunedin, Bichette still leads in four categories and is now the organizational leader in each of those four categories as well.
In Vancouver, Roger’s son Kacy Clemens has had a solid professional debut as has catcher Riley Adams. Logan Warmoth has played enough games yet but we feel like he’ll be on this leaderboard by season’s end.
Bluefield’s Ryan Noda has been putting up Bichette-like numbers and leads the rookie league team in all but one category.
The GCL Blue Jays have played the fewest games and so there isn’t much to base conclusions on but draftee Davis Schneider has been hot. Returning player Dominic Abbadessa has impressed as well.
DSL is a very low power league with very raw talents. Hector Guerrero and Rafael Lantigua have stood out early.
Pitchers:
(cutoff is different per level. Roughly, 50 IP for starters and 30 IP for relievers)
For Blue Jays pitchers, things have turned into the Marcus Stroman and Roberto Osuna show. In May, Danny Barnes, Ryan Tepera, Marco Estrada and Joe Biagini were on the leaderboard as well.
We were on the fence about Mike Bolsinger since he barely met the reliever cutoff and was a swingman for Buffalo. Chris Rowley would lead the ERA and FIP categories if we had made a different decision on Bolsinger. Cesar Valdez has been a valuable depth addition, contributing in Buffalo and Toronto.
Chris Rowley also qualifies for the AA leaderboard—he could soon figure into the major league picture. New Hampshire’s leaderboard is the exact same as it was in May.
Jordan Romano leads all starters in FIP. He’s taken over that distinctions from Ryan Borucki—who just trails Romano now. Tom Robson, surprisingly, holds to organizational lead in GB%
Lansing’s pitching staff has struggled as a whole but Patrick Murphy and Justin Maese have been outliers. The organizational ERA leader from May, Geno Encina, has fallen apart and effective relievers, Jackson McClelland and Kirby Snead, have been promoted.
It’s hard to determine much from the pitching stats of the short season leagues so far—sample sizes are just too small. The higher pitching draftees have also not accumulated enough innings to appear on the leaderboards yet. We’ll have a better idea next time
We’ll check in on these stats once or twice more later this season.
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