Toronto Blue Jays: Can Randal Grichuk bounce back?

Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Randal Grichuk had a down year in the first year of his extension.  While 2019 was rough, there’s reason to believe he can get back on track in 2020.

The first year of the Toronto Blue Jays five year, $52M deal with Randal Grichuk was quite the mixed bag. Despite hitting a career high 31 home runs, Grichuk recorded his worst wRC+ (90) and fWAR (0.5) total since his rookie season. Despite the down year, there’s reason to believe Grichuk can return to being an above average player.

One reason that may have caused Grichuk to struggle in 2019 was pitchers being less willing to throw him fastballs. Grichuk saw less than 50% fastballs (46%) for the first time in his career. With fewer fastballs to hit, Grichuk’s barrel% dropped from the 95th percentile in the league down an unremarkable 8.5%.

His exit velocity is another area of concern. While 89.3 MPH is still above the league average, it was down from 90.6 which dropped him from 43rd in baseball to 114th. The power is clearly still there but is  being skewed by the additional off speed pitches. On fastballs, Grichuk hit the ball as hard as ever at 92.5 MPH, but his exit velocities on breaking balls and off speed pitches dropped a full five miles per hour.

Pitchers have adjusted to Grichuk and there is a clear way to exploit him at the plate with more non-fastballs. That trend will likely continue into 2020, meaning that Grichuk needs to adjust his approach to attack fastballs when he gets them, make better contact on offspeed stuff, or lay off the off speed stuff and improve his walk rate.

Another discrepancy in Grichuk’s value is the disagreement between his defensive statistics. Defensive Runs Saved was not a fan of Grichuk’s OF work the past two years, especially in 2019 when he totaled -8 DRS. Comparatively, Statcast’s Outs Above Average has always been a big fan of Grichuk. At +6 OAA, Statcast sees Grichuk similar to premier defenders like Jackie Bradley Jr. and the recently signed Jarrod Dyson.

When defensive stats show such a difference in one player, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. If Grichuk is even an average or slightly below average on defense, he’ll get back to the solid contributor the Blue Jays were expecting when they signed him to that extension.

Offensively, Grichuk’s biggest question is will he be able to adjust seeing more off speed pitches. He’s either going to have to learn to hit those off speed pitches or attack fastballs when they come even if it isn’t in his wheelhouse.

The Toronto Blue Jays are in a transition year as they continue to break in their young talent. This year, we’ll find out if Randal Grichuk is going to lock down the CF role long-term or if his extension was ill-advised. Grichuk has some questions to answer, but he should be able to bounce all the way back to being a solid outfielder on a team looking to contend sooner rather than later.