Overrated: Jose Berrios
In 2022, Jose Berrios followed up five years of solid, if unremarkable, work with a troublesome and inconsistent season. The Toronto Blue Jays, who had inked Berrios to a seven-year, $131 million extension the previous offseason, looked to be on the hook for an albatross contract. Fortunately, the next two seasons saw Berrios return to his previous form as a reliable innings-eater with an ERA in the mid-3s.
Under the hood though, his 2024 season was right in line with that 2022 downturn.
While Berrios and the Blue Jays were more than happy to ditch his 5.23 ERA in 2022 for its 3.60 counterpart in 2024, his FIP was actually worse last year (4.55 and 4.72, respectively). Among qualified starters, that FIP put him on the wrong side of the leaderboard at fourth-worst in MLB. His other ERA estimators painted a similar picture: 4.74 xERA, 4.25 xFIP, and 4.33 SIERA.
He was able to mask these bloated figures by posting a career-high 81.4% LOB% that was second among qualified starters and a career-low .256 BABIP that was eighth. After a rebound in strikeout and home run rates in 2023, they once again both dipped below league-average in 2024. Pitch-level data such as whiff rates, exit velocities, and Stuff+ all agree that Berrios just doesn’t seem to have it anymore.
Miraculously, he has been the picture-perfect vision of health and has never missed a single start since becoming a regular starter in 2017. Even with a possible decline on the horizon, giving a team 32 games started year-in and year-out is incredibly impressive these days. Nonetheless, steady innings are not the same as quality innings, and Toronto may have to reckon with that distinction with Jose Berrios soon.