When the Jays are playing the way they are, I find it hard to come up with things to write about. Or perhaps I’m just depressed about the state of the team.
At the quarter mark of the season, the surprise player (well, surprise in a good way) has to be Brandon Valenzuela. He’s only played in 24 games (and five of those he didn’t start). He’s had 69 plate appearances, and a batting average of .226, 4 home runs and an OPS +103.
Defensively, he’s thrown out 35.0% of the guys who have tried to steal off
him. There are 3 errors, but no one is perfect.
Jays pitchers have a 3.77 ERA against him and a 4.52 ERA against Tyler Heineman. It is a small sample size, so there is likely some noise, but it appears the pitchers like throwing to him.
By bWAR, he’s tied for the best among Jays batters. Obviously, this is all a very small sample, and there is little in his history that suggests he’d be more than a glove-first backup catcher.
If he continues like this, the Jays will have to keep him as the backup to Alejandro Kirk when the time comes.
At the opposite end of the bWAR scale (and surprise scale), we have Tyler Heineman, at -0.9. Tyler was terrific last year, 1.9 bWAR in 61 games. But that was very much an outlier in his career. Other than 2025, his bWAR ranged from +0.3 to -0.1 (pretty normal for a backup catcher).
What’s going on this year?
He’s hitting .158/.200/.158 in 63 PA (again, a very small sample size). And it does seem like he’s lost confidence at the plate.
Defensively, he’s thrown out 20% of base stealers (league average 23.5 %), so considering the sample size, right around average (last year he threw out 30.2% of base stealers). And, as noted above, our pitchers haven’t fared as well throwing to him.
Tyler is out of options, though I don’t know if anybody would pick him up off waivers. Valenzuela has 3 option years left.
Alejandro Kirk is still weeks away from rejoining the Jays, so lots can happen between now and then, but Valenzuela is looking a lot like the backup catcher Heineman was last year.
