What Happened to Jose Berrios?

When landing in Toronto, Berrios was largely the same pitcher he has always been. After posting a 3.48 ERA through 20 turns with the Twins last year, he followed up with a 3.58 ERA in 12 starts for the Blue Jays. His strikeout numbers actually rose a bit and the walks dropped a little as well. Given the haul Toronto had to part with, they should’ve found the results pleasing.

Toronto knew that acquiring Berrios meant they would need to pay him. In order to make the decision to part with multiple top prospects worth it, a long-term deal had to be reached. In November, the club announced a seven-year extension worth $131 million. Heading into the first full season having the 28-year-old Berrios as their star, both parties were excited.

Now 14 games into 2022, and even with what’s been considered a deadened baseball, Berrios owns a career-worst 5.11 ERA (save for his awful 14-game debut during his rookie season). The 9.6 H/9, 1.8 HR/9, and 7.5 K/9 are all career-worst marks. He’s been entirely hot or cold having given up five or more runs four times while holding opponents to two or less on six occasions. For a starter that Minnesota has seen get worse as a season goes on, the poor showing out of the gate is hardly optimal.

I’m not intimate enough with the Blue Jays system or plan to know if tweaks have been made to his process, but the analytics paint a less than exciting picture as well. Berrios’ expected ERA sits at an even worse 6.20 despite a slightly better xFIP of 4.20. 

The largest issue appears to be in the quality, or frequency of optimal contact on balls hit in the air. This season Berrios has allowed a career high 40.9% fly ball rate. That’s over a 5% jump from the past two seasons, and 3% increase on the HR/FB mark as well. Although hard contact has remained consistent, and soft contact has actually increased, the barrel rate is a whopping 12.6%. Putting that into context, only three qualified hitters in Major League Baseball have a higher barrel rate than the average Berrios currently allows: Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Mike Trout. That has resulted in an average exit velocity up over 4 mph from his career average, and 3 mph higher than basically anything he’s done since 2017.

Hard hit rate can be deceiving as not all quality of contact is created equal. You can hit a ball hard off a suboptimal part of the bat. Barrelling a baseball though, especially with high exit velocities and ideal launch angles, will always result in damage.

Toronto has Berrios using his fastball 34% of the time, a mark Minnesota hadn’t come close to since 2019. He’s also entirely abandoned the curveball in favor of a slider, which he never previously utilized. Berrios has always had a couple of different takes on his breaking pitch, but it’s clear that there’s been an adjustment as to which one is favored.

There’s been virtually no change in the chase rate for Berrios, but he’s giving up the most contact he’s ever allowed inside the zone. Add in that his whiff rate is a career-low and the fastball velocity has dipped below a 94 mph average for the first time since 2019 and the problem starts to present itself.

It’s not as though Berrios forgot how to pitch or that the quality of stuff has fallen off a cliff, but the current pitch mix is allowing batters the ability to hone in on pitches in the zone, and do significant damage when making contact. Rather than hard-hit balls still having the potential to be outs, hard-hit balls are being barrelled with a heightened opportunity to benefit the hitter.

We’re still dealing with a pretty small sample size given it’s not even the All-Star game yet, but there’s reason to believe the rest of the way isn’t set up to benefit Toronto’s shiny new arm. Whether he continues a downward trend as the season goes on, the ball changes, or the warm weather helps hitters, Berrios will need to make tweaks on his own if he wants to settle back into the numbers he’s used to putting up.