Blue Jays have been kept afloat by Kikuchi, Berrios redemption seasons

This Blue Jays season hasn't been short on minor low points — nothing truly disastrous, but moments that seem to reinforce the idea that something is a little off for this year's squad.

One such instance came on Friday night when the Blue Jays lost a series-opening game to the dismal Oakland Athletics at home. Losing a single game to any team, even one as devoid of talent as the A's, isn't a travesty, but the defeat took a sweep off the table and put Toronto in real danger of dropping a series in embarrassing fashion.

Then, on Saturday and Sunday, the Blue Jays turned to two starters who were the furthest thing from likely course correctors a year ago — Yusei Kikuchi and José Berríos.

That duo provided 13 innings with just three earned runs allowed, helping to drive a strong end to what could have been a discouraging series. The Blue Jays are now 21-11 when one of José Berríos or Kikuchi is on the mound and 22-25 when anyone else is toeing the hill.

Of course, that stat can be deceptive.

Berríos had a brutal 2022 and the Blue Jays were still 23-9 when he pitched, but those results are still surprising considering what we saw last year. Below is a comparison between what the duo had produced at this time in 2022 compared to 2023:

While the pair improved slightly down the stretch in 2022 as Berríos came around and Kikuchi did some solid work in a bullpen role, both pitchers dragged the team down last year when they occupied 40% of the rotation.

This year, the opposite is true. The comparison above shows that a great deal of the difference has come from pure run suppression. By fWAR — which is driven by strikeouts, walks, and home runs — the pair has made a subtle improvement by Kikuchi limiting free passes and Berríos getting home runs under control a little more.

By RA9-WAR, which is exclusively based on runs allowed, the difference is profound — more than four wins in less than half a season. If Berríos and Kikuchi were conceding runs at the same clip as they were last year, the Blue Jays would project to be approximately 39-40 right now.

The discrepancy between those things is an interesting one. There's no doubt run prevention is more important to team success than peripherals are, but it might not be as valuable for projecting where these two pitchers go from here.

It's notable that both Berríos and Kikuchi have xERA marks (4.64 and 4.61, respectively) far higher than their actual ERAs (3.60 and 3.75).

Some of that can be explained by the Blue Jays' defence, which ranks in the top half of the league by most available public metrics. Even so, there's probably some regression to the mean coming as well.

Kikuchi, in particular, is still giving up extremely hard contact, as no pitcher has allowed more home runs than the southpaw (20). Only six of those longballs have come with men on base, but he might not be as fortunate with his sequencing as the season goes on.

For Berríos, there's probably an upcoming step-back in regards to his performance with runners in scoring position.

In his career, his OPS allowed in those spots (.733) is a little worse than how he's fared with the bases empty (.699). In 2023, he's handled hitters far better in RISP situations (.521) than in bases-empty spots (.704). If that evens out a bit, he'll have a hard time keeping runs off the board at the same rate he is now.

Despite these concerns, the Blue Jays have already benefited immensely from these two pitchers' turnarounds — and there are some concrete factors driving their improved success. For example, Kikuchi has debuted a curveball that has been an impact pitch for his repertoire with a minus-5 run value.

The southpaw has also done a far better job of throwing strikes, dropping his walk rate from 12.8% last year to 7.2% in 2023.

Berríos has also made concrete positive changes, throwing ineffective four-seam fastball less than ever (20.9%), inducing ground balls at a career-high rate (45.4%), and demonstrating dynamite command with his signature slurve.

In the midst of a Blue Jays season featuring notable disappointing individual performances ranging from Alek Manoah's unexpected breakdown to Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s power outage, this duo has done plenty to keep the Blue Jays afloat.

While there are enough red flags to indicate the pair's current pace may not be sustainable, there's also underlying trends suggesting the step forward we're seeing isn't the result of good fortune alone.

Last year when either Berríos or Kikuchi stepped on the mound, Blue Jays fans had to exist in a state of apprehension. This year they've provided the kind of stability most MLB teams could only dream of receiving from their fourth and fifth starters.