2011 MLB season in review: Toronto Blue Jays
The 2011 Toronto Blue Jays were surprisingly mediocre. They wound up 81-81, but when we look at how they won and lost their games we see that they were 45-47 in the first half and 36-34 in the second half. They were not good, but the upside is they were not terribly bad either. To immediately improve they could try and do better against their divisional opponents, granted that is easy to say for teams not in the American League East. They went 33-39 against their four divisional opponents, and only had a winning record against the Baltimore Orioles. They also went just 8-10 in inter-league play.
The 2011 Jays scored 743 runs on 1,348 hits. The team batting average was .249 and that was the fifth worst mark of the 14 AL teams. Four of the regular nine starters did have a pretty high average, and that seems to indicate that the Jays might be close to something very special. They did strike out the fourth most times, but did draw the fourth most walks. They also hit the fifth most home runs, and stole the sixth most bases. This is a pretty good offense that could do something special with a few minor tweaks.
So we already know that most teams that struggle, and I am talking about teams that do not win 90 games or so, always have issues with their pitching staffs. That holds true for the Blue Jays. They gave up 761 runs on 1,433 hits. The staff ERA was 4.33 and hat was fourth worst in their league. Two of their regular five starters did score double digit wins, but they both had double digit loses as well. More concerning is they only had one sub 3.00 ERA in the starting rotation, and one of their starters came in double that mark. This is a staff that throws strikes, fifth most in their league, but doesn’t seem to fool hitters very often.
The offense looks to be in pretty good shape, and a few tweaks here and there could put them over the top. The pitching on the other hand needs extensive work. There is some talent in the bullpen, but the starters rarely but them in a good position to take advantage of that. 56 of their games were decided by one run, and another 34 were blowout wins, a win by five or more runs. They did win 19 of those types of games so the offense is definitely not the problem. If they pitching staff can improve even a little bit next year the Jays might be able to make some noise.
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