Blue Jays going against power-arm trend with finesse bullpen

With the addition of Joe Smith over the weekend, the Toronto Blue Jays have essentially put the finishing touch on their bullpen.

Although there will be a spring-training competition for the title of second southpaw, longtime John Gibbons favourite Aaron Loup has the best shot. The choice for the fifth right-hander behind Roberto Osuna, Jason Grilli, Joe Biagini, and Smith is somewhat mysterious, but it’s also fairly inconsequential.

The remaining battles are over who gets to be a low-leverage inning sponge, and it’s exceedingly unlikely that there is any kind of major-league addition from outside the organization.

What the Blue Jays seem to have on their hands is a bog-standard group of relievers. The five guys with guaranteed jobs all fit traditional bullpen archetypes.

You’ve got your fireballing closer (Osuna), grizzled set-up man (Grilli), late-game lefty (J.P. Howell), multi-inning horse (Biagini), and now a righty-bat extinguisher in Smith. The talent level is solid but unspectacular, and you can bet that Gibbons won’t be deploying it in an exotic fashion.

There isn’t a takeaway that leaps off the page initially, but the Blue Jays have gone seriously against the grain putting this group together. The favoured model in baseball today is to stock your bullpen to the brim with high-velocity arms and Toronto just added two key pieces with sub-89 mph heat.

Last season, the average reliever’s fastball was clocked at 93 mph, a number that’s a pipe dream for most of the Blue Jays bullpen. Sure, Osuna and Biagini can get it up there, but no one else fits the “power pitcher” mold. If we assume that Loup breaks camp with the team along with Mike Bolsinger (the only out-of-options right-hander), then there won’t be a lot of sizzle residing in the Rogers Centre bullpen this season:

Last year, the team with the lowest velocity out of the bullpen – the Los Angeles Angels – averaged 91.8 mph on their fastballs. As constructed, the Blue Jays would limbo in well below that number.

Now, there are multiple ways to interpret this information. Velocity is just a means to an end. When teams fill their bullpens with live arms they are looking for strikeout totals, not sexy radar gun readings. There is a strong correlation between the two, but not a perfect one.

For instance, Grilli had the 11th-best K/9 among relievers last year with below-average gas due to a devastating slider. Koji Uehara is consistently a top-notch strikeout artist working in the mid-80’s with a nasty splitter.

There’s an argument to be made that the Blue Jays have found undervalued talent, unfairly penalized for lacking a superficial ability. A 98-mph fastball is a great tool to get batters out, but so too is the unusual arm angle employed by Smith. If the sidearmer had the same results and more conventional stuff perhaps he couldn’t be had on a one-year deal in early February.

On the flip side, big-time velocity is something the vast majority of teams seem to value highly in a reliever – and you can count poorly-run MLB clubs on one hand these days. The fact the Blue Jays are going against conventional wisdom might be a matter of necessity rather than philosophy, as the Jose Bautista deal left them with few resources to put toward building their bullpen.

In a crucial situation, most clubs seem to want a guy who can blow people away with raw power. Theoretically, there’s no reason why a relief corps built on finesse can’t work, but it’s not something franchises seem to aspire to.

Whether that kind of “umph” is a luxury or a necessity is hard to say. In 2017, the Blue Jays are going to find out.