NEW YORK — Home runs plaster over imperfections.
The New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers sit tied for baseball’s lead in dingers, with 41 each. The Yankees have three starters in the rotation with an ERA above 4.75. The Dodgers have already used nine different starting pitchers in 26 games. Both teams are still on pace to surpass 93 wins — rotation injuries rendered irrelevant with constant blasts to the bleachers.
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The 2025 Toronto Blue Jays don’t have that luxury, hitting just 14 homers in 26 games, second-fewest in MLB. They must find a different way to win because they’re not a team built to punish with power.
“It’s baseball,” outfielder Nathan Lukes said. “This is a rollercoaster ride. Everyone is judging us off our lack of homers. Like that s—’s gonna happen. Every team is gonna go through it. Everyone’s just comparing us to the Yankees and the Cubs.”
This dearth of dingers isn’t new for Toronto, as the team ranked 26th in MLB with just 156 homers last season. That 2024 team — with injuries, underperformance, and the league’s worst bullpen — wasn’t able to find the powerless path to success. But one exists.
The Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers ranked 20th and 24th in homers last season and still made the postseason, both winning a wild card series. Every year since the postseason field expanded to 12 in 2022, at least two teams in MLB’s bottom-10 for home runs have made the playoffs.
| Year | Team | HR | RISP wRC+ | Team ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
2024 |
20th |
8th |
8th |
|
|
2024 |
24th |
6th |
4th |
|
|
2023 |
22nd |
18th |
20th |
|
|
2023 |
22nd |
24th |
16th |
|
|
2023 |
24th |
8th |
1st |
|
|
2022 |
21st |
13th |
11th |
|
|
2022 |
25th |
16th |
4th |
|
|
2022 |
29th |
15th |
6th |
The eight franchises that overcame a lack of power to make the playoffs the last three years share commonalities: pitching and timely hitting. On average, these powerless postseason teams posted a 3.80 team ERA and 108 weighted runs created plus with runners in scoring position.
The 2022 Rays, the lone American League East team to find the postseason without power, didn’t have a single player surpass 20 homers. They still managed 86 wins with a top-10 rotation and bullpen. The ‘22 Rays also had six different players post a wRC+ over 110 with runners in scoring position, including Ji Man Choi’s absurd 166 mark.
“This game is a matter of scoring runs,” Lukas said. “Home runs are cool, but you’re not going to score all your runs off home runs. That’s not the game of baseball.”
The Blue Jays remain confident and adamant their power will come, but an alternative path is open. Toronto has the pitching part down. A strong rotation and a bullpen improved by the additions of Jeff Hoffman and Yimi García have the Blue Jays sitting 11th in team ERA (3.73).
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The clutch knocks are a problem. Toronto entered Saturday ranked 27th in wRC+ with runners in scoring position (75), part of the reason they head into Sunday’s doubleheader against the Yankees at 13-13. Only the Chicago Cubs, who still lead baseball in runs scored, have left more runners on base than the Blue Jays. Alejandro Kirk came up with the exact timely knock Toronto needed to beat the Yankees on Friday, but he’s the only Blue Jays batter with more than two extra-base hits with runners in scoring position this year.
Last season, Toronto faced a similar early-season slump in the clutch. At the end of April they ranked dead last with a 66 wRC+ with runners on second or third. The Jays managed a 114 mark with RISP for the rest of the 2024 season, but an imploding pitching staff made it all irrelevant. This year, the Jays need both to align.
Even if Anthony Santander heats up in the summer months, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. starts launching, and Bo Bichette finds the seats, the 2025 Blue Jays won’t magically become a homer behemoth. Entering the season, FanGraphs’ Steamer projections forecasted just two Blue Jays to hit more than 20 homers. So, this team is tasked with finding another way and there is a proven path for power-hungry teams.
“I don’t think we’re built like a team that is just waiting to hit a three-run homer,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “We know that.”
(Top photo of Tyler Heineman and Jeff Hoffman celebrating Friday’s 4-2 win over the Yankees, which came courtesy of a clutch hit: Elsa / Getty Images)
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