The Jays are a team with a crazy budget. Having positions in the bottom 1/3rd of the majors is unacceptable. Lets look at what happened by position in 2026.
- C: 3rd fWAR, 15th wRC+ -Kirk, Valenzuela, Heineman
- 1B: 21st fWAR, 24th wRC+ (yikes)- Vlad, Okamoto, Sosa, Keys, McAdoo all had 30+ PA (Vlad 540)
- 2B: 17th fWAR, 18th wRC+ - Clement, Urías (53 PA), McAdoo, Sosa, Schneider, and Smith all had 30+ PA, Clement over 400.
- 3B: 13th fWAR, 11th wRC+- Okamoto, Clement - everyone else sub 30 PA.
- SS: 18th fWAR, 27th wRC+ - Giménez/Clement only
- LF: 23rd fWAR, 13th wRC+ - Sánchez/Piñango/Schneider/Straw100+ PA each
- CF: 6th fWAR, 7 wRC+ - wow, Varsho/Bateman/Straw with Lukes & Cameron getting a tiny bit of time (under 30 PA combined)
- RF: 21st fWAR, 23rd wRC+ - Lukes/Sánchez/Straw 50+ PA each with Piñango, Bateman, Barger, Smith mixed in.
- DH: 20th fWAR & wRC+ - Springer 500 PA, Vlad 68 (149/162/224 line for a 0 wRC+), plus Jiménez, Keys, Sánchez, Kirk, Okamoto, Sosa, Varsho, Valenzuela, Piñango, Straw.
- SP: 13th fWAR, 16 starters used, 3 with 20+ starts - Cease, Gausman, Yesavage.
- RP: 10th fWAR, 33 relievers used, 3 over 70 appearances - Fluharty, Rogers, Varland with Fisher & Hoffman over 50.
Quite interesting as always.
- Top 10: C, RP, and CF. These are strengths and hard to upgrade. Both offensive positions have young guys (Kirk 27, Valenzuela 25, Bateman 24 last season) with many years of cheap control left. The pen outside of Rogers is mostly sub 30 (he is 35)
- 11-15: 3B, SP - Solid, but can improve but at a high cost. 3B is Okamoto who might improve year 2 in the majors, SP was a miracle given the injuries. Safe to say Corbin and Scherzer are gone as is Bieber most likely. Might bring back Gausman.
- 16-20: 2B, SS, DH - can upgrade these in theory. Giménez isn't going anywhere (too expensive), Clement should be a backup again, Springer retired I think. Keys might be ready for DH but I'd have backup plans ready.
- 21-30: 1B, LF, RF - Disaster zone - Vlad has been talked about to death and will be at 1B full time in '27-'38 so get used to it. LF/RF is the most obvious upgrade needed. Lukes is a nice 4th guy, Straw a near ideal 5th. But the rest are 'who cares' - we need upgrades. Barger might be solid when he comes back, as might Santander but betting on either is a fools game. I wouldn't be shocked if the Jays leave one of LF/RF open for those 2 and Lukes/Straw/Piñango/Smith to fight over but a damn good option needs to be found for at least one corner who can hit.
Some decent free agents are out there for LF/RF - Arozarena, Seiya Suzuki, Teruaki Sato are the biggest names. Expensive but well worth it - sign 1 and be better, sign 2 and woohoo - if the gang of Santander/Barger/etc can play then DH can be a mix.