Blue Jays set another franchise record in futility

The story of the 2019 Toronto Blue Jays season will not be remembered all that fondly by the statisticians and record keepers that play such a large role in baseball lore.

A year that — at best — will featured the sixth most losses the team has collected in a full season has been filled with a series of dubious record-setting statistics that paint a fairly accurate picture of a dire on-field product.

The team has already plowed through a franchise record in number of pitchers used and number of starting pitchers used while relying heavily on rookies. On Tuesday, with a dozen games left in the season, the Blue Jays bats combined to set a new franchise mark for most strikeouts in a year.

According to Sportsnet Stats, Blue Jays hitters went down on strikes a whopping 1,388 times (and counting) this season, a new high-water mark for unproductive at-bats.

The style of modern baseball plays into this inflation, of course, as strikeouts in general are up across the league. It stands to reason that the trend would also seep into a lineup filled with players short on experience and high on reasons to try to make an impact with big swings. Regardless of the factors, the numbers are what they are, and no version of the Blue Jays franchise has had more at-bats end with a K.

As it currently stands, seven players on the team have racked up triple-digit strikeout totals this season. Randal Grichuk, Teoscar Hernandez, Freddy Galvis, Rowdy Tellez, Cavan Biggio, Brandon Drury and Justin Smoak have been the most common offenders to be sent back to the dugout without putting the ball in play.

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