Troy Tulowitzki Is the Key to the Blue Jays' Season

This would have been the final season for Jose Reyes in a Toronto Blue Jays uniform. The maligned former shortstop is now a member of the New York Mets, receiving only the league minimum salary in his current club, while the Colorado Rockies send $22 million his way—the result of the former star being unceremoniously released last summer in the wake of a domestic violence suspension and the degradation of his once incredible skill set, which was becoming more apparent by the day as his time in Toronto wound down.

Reyes had a mini renaissance when he joined up with the Mets last summer. His numbers at the plate were his best since his first year in Toronto—the unforgettably forgettable 2013 season, in which so many Blue Jays fans' big hopes and dreams ended up sprawled on the dirt in Kansas City along with Reyes when, in mid-April, he injured his ankle sliding into second base there.

Reyes' Blue Jays career never really got past that moment. Over the course of the following two seasons his power and his ability to take a walk would erode, and ultimately so would his defence. But somewhere out there a parallel universe exists where Alex Anthopoulos wasn't keen or brave enough to recognize his mistake, and where the Colorado Rockies weren't desperate enough for an infusion of young pitching or cavalier enough to deal their franchise player in order to get it. Somewhere there's a universe where Jose Reyes is still the Blue Jays shortstop, getting set to play out the string of his contract and end a disappointing tenure in Toronto as fans and the club alike wonder what comes next for that all-important position on the diamond.

If you're a Blue Jays fan, that universe is a real fuckin' ugly one.

That Troy Tulowitzki, in his 172 games for the Blue Jays, has been worth "only" 4.2 Wins Above Replacement seems an indictment of the metric. Empirically, based on his results on the field and the best data available to us, I suppose we must grudgingly accept that number to be true. His numbers at the plate have been underwhelming, to say the least, with the bulk of his value coming from glove. He's been a league average hitter for the Blue Jays, posting a 99 wRC+ based on a slash line of .250/.318/.427—numbers that Reyes would have been vilified for, and understandably so because of how desperately he needed his bat to make up for his fading ability with the glove (or, more accurately, with his throws).

It's not just that Tulo's defensive work is good and Reyes' was bad. It's that Tulo's defence is so good. And the beauty of it is that it's recognizable how good his defence is—how much better his defence is at short than anyone Blue Jays fans have watched with regularity there since John McDonald—despite the fact that it's not good in an eye-popping way. He won't give you many jump-throws or all-out sprawls on the turf, he'll just leave you to marvel at the remarkable consistency of his play, the way balls almost never eat him up, and his uncanny ability to perfectly time every throw to beat the runner by just enough to make it obvious.

We are living in a golden age of shortstops, and though Tulo no longer hits well enough to be considered the gold standard among that group, he brings what seems like an incredible amount of intangible value to the club as well. In a scrum with reporters early on this spring, he spoke at length about his love of the sport and the position and his desire to continue to play shortstop at a peak level for as long as he can—something few, if any, players his size have been able to do. He talked about his work ethic—coming to the field early, staying late, talking strategy and imparting knowledge to his teammates—and about working with Josh Donaldson, whom he roomed with last spring so they could talk more baseball away from the park, on his footwork and throws. And he spoke about wanting everyone in the ballpark to get the feeling that, when a two-out ball is hit in his direction, they can put their heads down knowing the inning is over.

It's impossible to say how much of what he's saying about his passion and his attitude and his commitment to teammates translates into real positives for himself and for the rest of the Blue Jays, but anybody who has watched that video (which has since been pulled from YouTube) would have come away believing that, at the very least, it meant something—that he's bringing more to the club than just his glove and his stats.

And don't sell his hitting numbers short just yet, either.

Statcast produces a statistic called "barrels," which tells us how often a player struck a ball on the sweet spot. These are "batted ball events" that, based on the launch angle and exit velocity, are expected to produce a batting average of .500 and a slugging percentage of 1.500. In 2016, Tulo's percentage of barrels per plate appearance was even with Manny Machado's, and ranked 36th among 298 hitters with at least 150 batted ball events.

Tony Blengino's excellent work for FanGraphs this winter on contact quality tells us much the same. Blengino uses exit velocity and launch angle data for the different types of balls in play a hitter produced (line drive, ground ball, fly ball, etc.) to come up with an adjusted version of wRC+ that's based on quality of contact rather than actual results. In 2016, though Tulowitzki's wRC+ of 102 put him even with Eduardo Nunez as the sixth-best hitting shortstop in the American League, based on how he actually struck the ball he vaults over Elvis Andrus, Xander Bogaerts, Brad Miller, and Francisco Lindor. His adjusted wRC+ of 124 ranks second only to Carlos Correa, and factoring in NL shortstops, he trails only Correa and Corey Seager.

In other words, I'd say that we shouldn't discount the notion that Tulo may still have an elite season or two left in his bat, but the reality is—if you buy into what the Statcast data is telling us—he had one in 2016, it just didn't quite show up in his results.

Of course, to act like everything must be fine with Tulowitzki's bat would gloss over some of the tribulations of his 2016, like his abysmal start to the season. In April and May of last year it wouldn't have been difficult to find fans or experts wondering aloud about whether Tulo might be done. As he headed into a mid-May series in San Francisco, Tulo's slash line sat at a pitiful .162/.266/.306. He looked like he was getting beaten by good fastballs. A few days later Dave Cameron wrote at FanGraphs about the "worrisome trend" in his rate of contact on pitches in the zone, which was drastically sinking. He was swinging through strikes—never a good sign.

Add in the ever-present spectre of health concerns, including a trip to the DL before the month was through, and "worrisome" didn't even begin to describe it. Nor can we shake those concerns now. In fact, they may even loom larger than they did a year ago—not because it's any more likely that Tulowitzki will spend a portion of the season on the DL, but because more than ever he seems absolutely crucial to the success of this team.

It wasn't just Statcast data that suggested Tulo was striking the ball well but getting unlucky results from the time he came off the DL in early June until the end of the season. The eye test bore out the same results. And while his defence is superb, a player like Darwin Barney or Ryan Goins can fill in more than competently for him if there comes a point where Tulo gets injured—a point he's reached in each of the last five seasons. It is his bat that can be the absolute key to the success or failure of the post-Encarnación Blue Jays here in 2017.

If Tulowitzki can simply strike the ball like he did last season, better results will come. Much better results, in fact, if you believe Blengino's work and Statcast's data. The burden on newcomers like Kendrys Morales and Steve Pearce to replace the production of Edwin and Michael Saunders will be lifted. The burden on Jose Bautista to find his old stroke will be lessened. The burden on Donaldson to continue to carry this offence on a nightly basis will be decreased. The need for Devon Travis to come into his own or for Kevin Pillar to finally figure it out (same for the messes in left field and at first base) won't entirely go away, but the Blue Jays won't live or die by them like it feels now that they might.

A hitter going from 99 wRC+ to 124 wRC+—or whatever Tulo's certainly higher post-DL adjusted number was—isn't a panacea for everything that could possibly go wrong with this offence, but it provides a vital buffer against what most are assuming could be a very thin margin for error.

He doesn't have to change. He doesn't have to get better. He simply has to hit the ball the way he did last season, and better results will come. And, of course, he has to stay healthy.

That last one is a big ask of a guy with Tulowitzki's track record, but if he does, look out. The Blue Jays could be in a lot better shape than people expect.