Blue Jays' 152 Homers Were Not the Whole Failure

If the Blue Jays reduce their offensive postmortem to “hit more home runs,” they will have learned the easiest lesson from a difficult season.

Toronto hit 152 home runs. According to recent reporting, that was last in MLB. Power deserves a prominent place in the offseason discussion.

It cannot be the whole discussion. The same recent coverage says the Blue Jays also struggled to get on base and ranked poorly in walks and on-base percentage. A hitting philosophy that failed under adversity needs a broader review than a search for a louder result.

The power shortage is real

There is no reason to talk around 152 home runs. Toronto finished 79-83, scored 648 runs and averaged 4 runs per game. Recent reporting says it finished last in MLB in runs scored as well as home runs.

Those figures make the demand for more power understandable. A club that produces more damaging contact can give itself more ways to score. Refusing to acknowledge the home-run problem would make an honest review impossible.

But a diagnosis can be true and incomplete. “More power” describes a desired outcome. It does not explain why the offense as a whole came up short, how the club expects hitters to reach that outcome or what happens if a change fails to produce it.

Recent reporting also says Toronto ranked poorly in slugging and exit velocity, with one account placing it last in slugging. That strengthens the case for examining the quality of the offense’s contact. It does not erase the separate reported difficulty getting runners on base.

The Blue Jays should resist any answer that turns one bad category into permission to ignore another.

Getting on base belongs in the repair plan

A .247 batting average and a .691 OPS describe different aspects of Toronto’s season, but neither tells us every reason the lineup faltered. The reported weakness in walks and on-base percentage deserves attention in its own right.

This is not an argument that reaching base matters and power does not. Both matter. The point is that a plan focused only on clearing the fence would leave a substantial part of the reported failure unaddressed.

Nor can we claim, from these facts, that hitters were instructed to disregard walks. The available information does not tell us what individual hitters were taught or why the club’s on-base results were poor. Criticizing the outcome should not require inventing an internal directive.

It should require the club to examine one. If Toronto intends to change its hitting philosophy, it needs to ask whether that philosophy gave enough weight to reaching base, how it measured that part of the offense and whether its response to poor results was effective. The fans do not need a fabricated answer. They need evidence that the organization is asking the question.

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A bigger swing is not a complete theory

According to recent reporting, the Blue Jays’ hitting philosophy did not hold up to adversity. That assessment should make the organization wary of replacing one uncomplicated message with another.

The failure was not confined to a single reported measure. Toronto’s season totals show limited run production and home-run output; reporting adds trouble with walks, on-base percentage, slugging and exit velocity. The exact relationship among those problems is something the club must determine. Declaring one the cause of all the others would go beyond what we know.

Ross Atkins has publicly accepted responsibility for the offensive collapse and committed to major changes, according to recent reporting. The strongest version of that commitment would address the full problem. The weakest would put one attractive number at the center of every conversation and hope the remaining concerns improve on their own.

Atkins should have to defend how any change is expected to improve run production, not simply how it might produce more home runs.

Ask for an offense, not a headline statistic

The Blue Jays finished fifth in their division. No single category explains every part of that result, and no single category should become the club’s entire offseason identity.

Toronto should pursue more power. It should also take the reported on-base weakness seriously and explain how a revised hitting philosophy would respond when its first plan stops working. Those are compatible demands, not competing camps in an offseason argument.

My stance is that 152 home runs are an indictment, not a complete diagnosis. If the Blue Jays treat the number as the whole story, they may improve the part of the offense that is easiest to describe while leaving the larger failure insufficiently examined.

A better offense needs more than a better headline. It needs a plan for producing runs when the easy answer is not enough.