Blue Jays reliever Braydon Fisher continues to dominate

When you look at what’s made Fisher so dominant, you’ll quickly find that his slider/curveball combination has been the leading cause.

Both pitches have a sub .212 expected batting average against, both pitches have a sub .320 expected slug% against, and both pitches return a 31% or better whiff rate. The tall right-hander also has a 4-seam fastball in his back pocket, which he uses sparingly, that has outlier traits (18″ of IVB), and a cutter, which he’s used just 3% of the time.

Pitching to the opposite handedness hasn’t been an issue for Fisher either, in fact, he’s been better against lefties this season, especially from a missing bats standpoint.

Earlier in the season the Blue Jays used Fisher in multiple different roles, including having him open a game against the A’s ahead of Easton Lucas pitching the bulk innings. The righty struggled in that outing, allowing five earned runs over 1 2/3 innings pitched. If you were to remove that outing completely, Fisher’s numbers would be even more ridiculous: you’d be looking at a 0.75 ERA/1.09 FIP/30.1 K-BB% across 25 innings for the Texas native. With a larger sample size of dominance under his belt, however, it’s become clear that the Blue Jays see him the way the fanbase sees him, and that’s as a trusted, shutdown leverage arm pitching the late innings.

The Jays bullpen is slowly starting to get healthy again, Yimi Garcia aside, Nick Sandlin and Ryan Burr are back. Rodriguez has emerged as a late-inning force, and Fisher’s done the same. Even Chad Green is putting up some strong innings as of late.

This has been an area of strength for the team, at the same time it’s been an extremely overworked group. One more high-impact addition to this group could catapult them from being a really good bullpen to an elite one (Jhoan Duran, anyone?). Regardless of if and who that addition may be, one thing is for certain: Braydon Fisher is going to remain a key contributor moving forward.