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Toronto Blue Jays: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season

By Sean Basile

TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 27: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. #27 of the Toronto Blue Jays grounds out against the Tampa Bay Rays in the fourth inning during their MLB game at the Rogers Centre on September 27, 2019 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Mark Blinch/Getty Images)
TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 27: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. #27 of the Toronto Blue Jays grounds out against the Tampa Bay Rays in the fourth inning during their MLB game at the Rogers Centre on September 27, 2019 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Mark Blinch/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images)
(Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images) /

Is Ryu a bona fide number one? Maybe not. But at the very least, he’s a high two. So, the Toronto Blue Jays are in good shape now that they have a guy at the top of their rotation to build the rest of the starters around who will also be in the Cy Young conversation this season.

They’ve done well this offseason at shoring up their rotation in retaining Matt Shoemaker coming off injury after a hot start in 2019, as well as acquiring Chase Anderson, Tanner Roark, and even Shun Yamaguchi from the Japanese league. In addition to these newly-acquired and retained veteran starters, the Jays have a pretty good crop of younger guys underneath them to (I’m assuming) take over the rotation if and when these vets go on the trade market this year.

Nate Pearson is one of the best pitching prospects in all of baseball and he’s having himself a very good spring. Last year across three different farm teams in the Blue Jays organization, Pearson went 5-4 with a 2.30 ERA and struck out 119 batters in 102.1 innings after making a big jump from Advanced A-Ball to Triple-A over the course of one season. Pearson is on the fast track to the Majors and I think we’re going to be seeing him sooner than projected.

Alongside young starters like Pearson are guys like Ryan Borucki, Trent Thornton, TJ Zeuch, and Jacob Waguespack who have all broken through to the big leagues already, as well as Anthony Kay who came over in the Marcus Stroman deal last year after a terrific season for the Mets’ Triple-A affiliate. The Blue Jays clearly have depth at the starting pitcher position, and if they were to get bitten by the injury bug as they were last year, I believe we will be seeing a ton of these pitchers in various starting and bullpen roles for a god portion of 2020.

Will the Toronto Blue Jays be a “phenomenal” pitching team? Maybe they aren’t quite there yet. But they’ll definitely be a couple steps up from last year when they were 21st in team ERA (4.79) because of the additions they made this offseason and because of the young studs they have lurking in Triple-A.

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