Gap to gap: Blue Jays spring training Statcast standouts

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DUNEDIN, Fla. — At the end of Blue Jays camp last spring, veteran catcher Rob Brantly led all hitters with a .438 batting average over 16 games. He ultimately finished 2023 without appearing in a single MLB contest. Meanwhile, Chris Bassitt had a team-worst 5.60 ERA over five spring appearances. He went on to pitch to an ERA two full runs lower across 200 innings once the games began to count.

Every spring it’s the same story. Small-sample Grapefruit League results tell us little about how a player’s season is likely to play out. Grapefruit League measurables, on the other hand, can tell you something about an athlete’s ability.

If you put a ball in play with an exceptionally high exit velocity, you’ve demonstrated an aptitude to produce the kind of contact that leads most often to extra-base hits. If you register a high sprint speed, you can undeniably move quicker than most players, which leads to better baserunning, greater defensive range, and reaching base more often on soft contact.

Strong Statcast readings don’t always translate to strong slugging percentages or strikeout rates. But these measurables do tell you which players can do things others can’t. So, let’s mine some of the data collected by Hawk-Eye technology at minor-league ballparks around Florida this spring to highlight a few players who flashed loud tools at Blue Jays camp.

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Yimi Garcia’s fastball velocity

If someone asked you which Blue Jays pitcher threw the hardest this spring, you’d probably say Nate Pearson. And you’d be right — Pearson was his usual, over-powering self, touching 100 a handful of times.

But you might not have expected the guy who threw second-hardest:

Blue Jays average fastball velocity (mph, minimum 25 pitches)

Yimi Garcia has been throwing gas from the jump, touching 98 in his first spring appearance back in February before reaching 99 in each of his next two outings. When we saw Garcia increasing intensity early in camp a year ago, it was thought that the veteran right-hander was merely preparing for the mid-March World Baseball Classic. But as it turns out, the WBC had little to do with it.

“I want to throw hard always,” Garcia says. “I work really hard in the off-season so I can do that. A lot of weight room. A lot of throwing. A lot of bullpens. I never stop. That’s why my velocity is always there.”

Garcia trained this winter at a facility near his home in Arizona with Cincinnati Reds starter Frankie Montas and New York Yankees reliever Dennis Santana. Coming off a career-high 66 innings pitched in 2023, Garcia took about a month off from throwing to let his arm recover. But by December, the 33-year-old was pitching off a mound at least five days a week, mixing high-intensity bullpens with lighter, moderate-effort sessions.

Utilizing feedback from Montas and Santana, Garcia worked to develop a new sweeper he hopes to add to his already-deep arsenal this season, while tweaking the changeup and cutter that gradually faded from his pitch mix down the stretch in 2023.

Garcia will always be primarily a fastball-curveball pitcher. But the changeup gives him an additional arm-side weapon against left-handed hitters, who he doesn’t typically use his sinker against, while the cutter is useful glove-side away from righties and up to lefties when Garcia tunnels it effectively off his fastball. He plans to use the sweeper in two-strike counts to encourage right-handers to chase off the plate.

If that all sounds like a lot, well, it is. Garcia intends to carry seven pitches — four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter, slider, sweeper, changeup, curveball — in his toolbox this season, utilizing whichever’s feeling best on any given day within Toronto’s attack plan against various opponents.

Of course, it all starts with his high-90’s fastball, which has been overpowering this spring. After Garcia tied a career-high by averaging 96-mph with his heater in 2023, he appears well positioned to exceed that a decade after making his big-league debut.

With Jordan Romano and Erik Swanson beginning the season on the injured list, having an experienced, hard-throwing, versatile weapon like Garcia on hand is a blessing for Toronto’s coaching staff. Considering how strong he’s looked throughout spring, expect to see a lot of Garcia early this season.

“For me, it doesn’t matter what inning I pitch. My goal is to pitch the best I can, no matter what situation I come into the game,” Garcia says. “I always try to do the best I can to help the team to win. It doesn’t matter when. Seventh, eighth, ninth, multiple innings. They can put me in to start if they want to. I’m happy with everything.”

Orelvis Martinez’s power

Among Blue Jays hitters to put at least five balls in play this spring, only Brian Serven (the Blue Jays secondary catcher who reworked his swing path over the winter with famed hitting coach Craig Wallenbrock) and Bo Bichette posted a higher average air exit velocity — which filters out groundballs — than Orelvis Martinez:

Blue Jays average air exit velocity (mph, minimum five balls in play)

And the only Blue Jays to hit a ball in the air harder than Martinez this spring were Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bichette:

Blue Jays hardest-hit balls in play (mph, excluding groundballs)

That’s how you lead the minor leagues in homers, as Martinez has with 86 since 2021. And that’s why the infielder has been a steady presence on top-100 prospect lists throughout that span. The only minor-leaguers that have come close to matching Martinez’s power production over the last three seasons are well into their mid-to-late 20’s. Martinez is only 22.

Of course, that proliferation of too-old-to-still-be-considered-a-prospect sluggers in the upper minors is itself a cautionary tale. It takes more than raw power to survive in the big-leagues, and Martinez’s biggest challenge as a professional has been making better swing decisions and cutting down an elevated whiff rate that has led to strikeouts in bunches.

But Martinez shaved nearly five points off his strikeout rate from 2022 to 2023 while increasing his walk rate by four-and-a-half. With the book long out on him, and minor-league pitchers throwing him more breaking balls than fastballs over the last two seasons, Martinez has demonstrated an ability to make adjustments, be more selective, and do a better job forcing pitchers onto the plate.

That’s why Blue Jays developers will tell you Martinez is entering 2024 in the best spot he’s been in since joining the organization in 2019. The test this year at triple-A — where Martinez will be a half-decade younger than the average age — will be avoiding or quickly overcoming the initial struggles he’s consistently demonstrated when exposed to a new level throughout his career.

For what it’s worth in such a minuscule sample, Martinez went strikeout-for-walk across 20 spring training plate appearances while posting a 16.7 per cent chase rate. If he can keep laying off-spin, hammering mistakes, and actualizing his power in games, you’ll likely see Martinez in a Blue Jays uniform before the end of 2024. And he might just chart a Babe Schneider-esque arc if he times a hot streak with that opportunity.

Ernie Clement’s speed

Ernie Clement will bring some very specific strengths to the Blue Jays this season in his bench utility role, including positional versatility, uncommon bat-to-ball skill, and an evolving swing path that’s helping him hit more line drives. But an element of his game we probably don’t talk about enough is his speed. No Blue Jay this spring displayed more of it than Clement:

Blue Jays average sprint speed as a batter (feet per second)

With Whit Merrifield and Matt Chapman departed, and Kevin Kiermaier and George Springer getting deeper into their mid-30’s, it’s fair to argue Clement’s the fastest player on Toronto’s opening-day roster.

Of course, speed is an attribute, while base-stealing is a skill. And Clement hasn’t demonstrated that skill in the majors, swiping only one bag. He has a spotty minor-league track record, too, having been successful on just 68.8 per cent of attempts (55-of-80).

But speed can be impactful in other ways. Clement’s pace out of the box when he uses his contact ability to put balls in play will apply pressure to defenders (he posted two of Toronto’s five fastest home-to-first times this spring) and when he’s on base he’ll be liable to go first-to-third or second-to-home on groundballs that sneak through the infield.

Clement’s role on this team isn’t to carry an offence — it’s to be a versatile contributor in select situations that play to his strengths. That includes putting balls in play when contact is preferable, bouncing between every infield position with the occasional outfield appearance, and providing a high-end speed element Toronto’s roster otherwise lacks.

Connor Cooke and Mason Fluharty’s slider movement

No one in Blue Jays camp spins a breaking ball quite like Paolo Espino. But a couple of young relievers who will join him at triple-A Buffalo this season are giving the 37-year-old journeyman a run for his money.

Averaging nearly 19 inches of horizontal movement this spring, Connor Cooke’s slider featured the most bite of any Blue Jay in camp. And Mason Fluharty wasn’t far behind, flinging his primary pitch with only an inch less of glove-side break across the zone:

Blue Jays average glove-side movement (inches, minimum 25 pitches)

Of course, all that movement is only effective if you can use it to earn strikes, and Fluharty was more successful than Cooke in that regard. Fluharty threw a strike with two-thirds of his sliders this spring while Cooke got one with a little less than half of his.

There’s no questioning Cooke’s ability to throw strikes when he’s on — he ran a 40.6 per cent strikeout rate in 2023 over 44.1 innings spread between high-A, double-A, and triple-A. But he battled control issues at times in Blue Jays camp, walking 10.7 per cent of the batters he faced.

Fluharty’s command was inconsistent this spring, as well, but he overcame it with a monstrous 38.7 per cent strikeout rate across his seven appearances. Among the 18 pitchers in camp to face at least 30 batters, only Espino and Chad Green posted a better K-BB rate than Fluharty’s 25.8 per cent.

Last season, Fluharty struck out a mere 30 per cent of the batters he faced while splitting time between high-A and double-A, generating a ton of awkward swings with a unique, left-handed pitch profile in which he plays that big slider off an upshoot cutter from a three-quarter’s arm slot. The right-handed Cooke can be an uncomfortable look, as well, dropping and driving to create a low release point that helps his mid-90’s fastball carry past bats from an uncommon angle.

As pure relief prospects signed out of college, the 24-year-old Cooke and 22-year-old Fluharty are a lot closer to the majors than some may realize. And you could throw 24-year-old TJ Brock’s name in that mix, as well. All he did last season was strike out 37.3 per cent of the batters he faced between high-A and Double-A, running his heater up to 98 as a secondary pitch — yes, his secondary pitch — off a high-80’s bullet slider with mean downward bite that he’s leaned on as his primary weapon.

The Blue Jays feel good about their bullpen this season, returning nearly all of a group that led MLB with a 17.7 K-BB rate in 2023. But no other position group is more volatile than relievers, whether by injury or sudden underperformance. And if the Blue Jays are in need of mid-season reinforcements, arms such as Cooke’s, Fluharty’s, and Brock’s are ones to keep an eye on. They’ve certainly proven they have the stuff.

Arden Zwelling is an on-field reporter for Blue Jays broadcasts on Sportsnet. Gap-to-gap is his regular space for expanded Blue Jays and MLB notes, thoughts, and non-sequiturs that don’t quite fit on TV..

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