How depth of Toronto Blue Jays’ roster will determine 2024 fate

The Toronto Blue Jays’ quiet offseason could be interpreted as a big bet on the team’s core, but the club is more likely to differentiate itself with the bottom of its roster than the top this season.

Kevin Gausman has a Cy Young ceiling, and the team employs position players capable of delivering star-level performances, but this group doesn’t run on star power — like it did in 2021, when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Marcus Semien were MVP candidates, Bo Bichette and Teoscar Hernández were worthy all-stars, and Robbie Ray won the Cy Young.

The Blue Jays haven’t had a position player top 4.5 fWAR in a season over the past two years as Bo Bichette’s 2022 ranks 58th among all position-player campaigns by that metric. No one projects to get over 4.3 in 2024 according to FanGraphs’ ZiPS projection system.

A resurgent season by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is a possibility, Daulton Varsho’s defensive mastery gives him a road to producing massive value if his bat heats up, George Springer could build on a big spring and Alejandro Kirk has started the All-Star Game at a premium position. There’s a chance a Blue Jay other than Gausman produces at a truly elite level, but that hasn’t been the case lately.

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It’s not fair to expect Toronto’s top dogs to match up to the superstar duo of Juan Soto and Aaron Judge in New York or the trio of Yordan Alvarez, Alex Bregman, and Kyle Tucker in Houston, for instance.

While that may sound grim, it’s also noteworthy that the Blue Jays’ depth is impressive — and seems likely to be a competitive advantage over its direct rivals. Most competitive clubs have competence at the bottom of their rosters, but Toronto has some possible difference-makers.

Alek Manoah is an excellent example. The range of possible outcomes for his season is massive — particularly as he deals with shoulder soreness — but no team in the majors has a fifth starter with the potential to reach the heights Manoah experienced in the first two years of his career.

Behind him sits a starter who’s shown plenty of promise in the spring (Bowden Francis) and an experienced swingman who’s just discovered stuff that could radically boost his potential (Mitch White), with a $32 million international free agent wielding a compelling repertoire working his way into the mix (Yariel Rodriguez).

In the bullpen, Toronto figures to open the season without its top two relievers, but still has multiple experienced late-inning arms like Yimi Garcia and Chad Green who’ve closed out games plenty in their careers.

Down two bodies the Blue Jays have been able to turn to an ultra-talented fireballer (Nate Pearson) and a hard-throwing groundball specialist (Zach Pop) with a sub-4 ERA at the MLB level (3.94). The Tampa Bay Rays can seemingly conjure quality relievers out of thin air, but most other teams can’t and would be in a worse spot than the Blue Jays find themselves in now.

On the position-player side, the Blue Jays don’t have an everyday spot for Davis Schneider, who started off his career on a historic heater, crushed the ball at Triple-A last season, and projects for a wRC+ of 110 or above according to five of FanGraphs’ six projection systems. It’s possible that Joey Votto can still bang, and if he can he’ll be a heck of a bench asset as well. Maybe Daniel Vogelbach might just be what Blue Jays fans are dreaming Votto could be.

None of this is to say that Toronto’s offseason deserves to be lauded as a triumph, or that the Blue Jays 2024 upcoming campaign warrants unbridled optimism. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of this team’s core, the bottom of its lineup, and whether the seemingly minor injury issues on the pitching staff will sort themselves out.

There’s a reason the Blue Jays are projected to win between 85 and 88 games and haven’t generated the same level of buzz as they did prior to the last two or three seasons.

It’s just worth remembering that while the ways this team is underwhelming are front-and-centre, the things that give it an advantage over its opponents are more subtle. There is quality up and down this roster from its deep pitching staff to a versatile mix of position players that will allow the club to ride hot hands and hunt matchups better than it has in previous seasons.

Whether that’s enough to uplift the top of this roster remains to be seen — but if Toronto’s best players follow up their underperformance in 2023 with projection-beating output in 2024 the guys around them are unlikely to let them down.

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