Blue Jays & the Need for a Lefty Bat

The Blue Jays had a shopping list heading into the Trade Deadline and a lefty bat was on there. They came away without one and we look at if that’s a problem

The Toronto Blue Jays had themselves a Trade Deadline. It wasn’t as dramatic as the 2015 iteration, but it was pretty cool. They landed Jose Berrios and Joakim Soria in the final hours after adding Adam Cimber, Corey Dickerson and Trevor Richards previously. They checked off just about everything on their shopping list except one: a lefty bat. The question remains whether that was a necessity, or just something that would have been nice, but that they can live without.

Imagine the reaction if the Blue Jays had managed to land a lefty slugger like Kyle Schwarber or even a switch hitter like Jose Ramirez. Alas, it wasn’t in the cards and now manager, Charlie Montoyo will need to flex his lineup construction muscles (such as they are) to get the most out of every game.

With Cavan Biggio being the only regular left handed hitter – Joe Panik was sent to Miami in the Cimber deal and Dickerson has yet to play and the other lefty is Reese McGuire – Toronto looks to be in rough shape. Biggio is having a rather disappointing season thus far. He had been moved to third base, which was clearly not a good idea. He was also hurt (perhaps longer than we knew), which could also have contributed to his poor offensive performance. But, an OPS of .666 is a) not what we’re used to seeing from him and b) just not good enough.

Typically, left handed batters give their team an advantage against right handed pitching, among other things. Let’s take a look at Toronto’s 2021 splits to see if they’re at a disadvantage with their right handed heavy lineup:

Look at the lefty batters’ OPS against lefties: .673. That’s brutal. Digging a little deeper, looking at individual players, we see that Biggio has an OPS vs LHP of .517 (career: .735), McGuire’s is .493 (career .452). For his career, Dickerson’s OPS vs lefties is .713. According to our friends at Baseball Reference, the 2021 average OPS (against all pitchers) for MLB is .722, just to give you an idea. Looking at this, you would think that Toronto would love to have an upgraded lefty to hit against left handed pitching.

However, look at the following chart via Statmuse.com: