It's been a rough first half for the two-time defending World Series Champions with the primary problem being a fairly anemic offense. Yordan Alvarez left as a free agent last winter and was never adequately replaced, leading to us finally giving up on the in-house replacements and trade for another aging star hitter in
Juan Soto, who's been awful in the couple of weeks since acquiring him. The team got off to an okay start but struggled after that, spending much of June within a game or two of .500 before winning their last six games against NL West opposition to move six games over. Whether it's a dead cat bounce or the start of a surge remains to be seen.
How things look around MLB:
The Jays raced to a huge start but have tailed off some lately, so combined the very recent Rays resurgence the division isn't being written off like it might have been when they were 8 1/2 back. There's a lot of parity in the AL right now so fortunately they haven't dug themselves a big hole.
And there in a nutshell is the issue, as alluded to at the outset. The bats have been anemic for the most part while the pitching has been its usual brilliant self. The team defense is mediocre as we don't really have any standout defenders. Also the back end of the bullpen has developed into a real problem of late. The Ogando-Rodriguez combo in the 8th and 9th was one of the best in baseball the previous three seasons and has a couple of rings to show for it but both have struggled big-time this year (especially with the home run ball) and that's a key reason why we're four games below our Pythagorean record.
We've given 625 at-bats over the first-season to a variety of players who have all been below sub-replacement value, which gives you an idea of how things have gone. We've cycled through various OF and 1B trying to fill the lineup holes from Alvarez and the traded Rodolfo Solano and it's been a nightmare. And it also isn't helping when some of the bigger names are underachieving, such as Hardy, Williams and even Pino, who despite leading us in WAR hasn't been the force he was last year. Only Rutschman has been an unqualified success at the plate this year. Haro and White have heated up of late and are big reasons why we had those last two nice series. I'm hoping for positive regression from this crew and hopefully Soto starts doing something instead of looking like the guy(s) he replaced.
A much more pleasant stats summary to look at is the pitching, where Najera and Lennon are two of the top starters in baseball and the converted Vargas is not far behind. The middle and setup men have been quite solid, but it's not good as mentioned above that the two late-inning guys are at the very bottom of the stats above with ERAs that could be Boeing jet lines. The home run ball has been their bane with 12 allowed in only 45 innings between them as well as 31 walks, a deadly (to them) combination. As mentioned Ogando has been a bit better of late but something will have to change here or we'll have to try and trade for a closer in the next month.
This is a pretty gruesome farm system with no real high-end prospects, although there is a fair amount of depth. Last year's #1 pick Arroyo has made a meteoric rise through the system and has been hitting well at Durham - with Cedillos and Williams not exactly setting the world afire at SS Arroyo could make the final rung before the season is out. Otherwise there's no immediate help coming this way from this group, although
Omar Pico (not listed here) hit well in his brief callup before making way for Soto and could get the call again.