2026 Team Previews: Toronto Blue Jays
A detailed fantasy baseball oriented team preview of the 2026 Toronto Blue Jays
Full Series Links and Explanation Page Here
Intro
My ideal world is one where I can make whatever jokes I want on the Internet and never suffer any consequences for it. But the ideal world doesn’t exist, so I have to make choices. Last fall, I chose to make fun of Canada a lot, and that turned some people off. Do I regret it? No. There’s not much to lose; only 4% of you are in Canada.
I’ve been to Canada once as a kid. My parents took us to Toronto and made me sit through The Phantom of the Opera at whatever big theatre they have there. I wanted to go to a Blue Jays game, but that’s never how our vacations went. I’ve seen Abe Lincoln’s childhood home, but never a baseball game with my dad. Is that why I’m so close-minded and pig-headed? Because my dad never took me to a ballgame?
What we should all learn to do is to not judge the individual by the characteristics of a group they belong to. Just because you’re a Canadian doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You didn’t get to choose where you were born.
I’m joking. But the other thing you learn when you get older is that every joke has at least a little bit of truth in it. I’d rather live in America than Canada. God Bless the USA. But if you’re in Canada, please keep reading this and subscribe. You guys have a good baseball team up there. It was an impressive season, and they were fun to watch in the postseason. And we all do feel a little bit bad about how it ended. It’s not like rooting for the Los Angeles team with a half-billion-dollar payroll makes you feel the warm and fuzzies inside.
I’ll be cheering for the Yankees to win the AL East this year, though. My ten year old self would hate me for that. But ten-year-olds are stupid.
Let’s talk some Blue Jays.
Hitters
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Age: 26
Pos: 1B
A lot of dudes have aged out of the stud tier at first base, but Vlad might just be getting started! He’s only 26 years old and coming off another very strong year with the bat.
Although that huge postseason he had did fool me into remembering his season being a bit better than it actually was.
Only 23 bombs and six steals, that’s not really what you’re looking for in the first or second round of a standard roto draft. But he has three 30+ homer seasons under his belt, and the batting average floor has been pretty great. He’s also never hurt, and he drives in a bunch of runs. So he’s very good.
It’s a floor play for Vlad more than a guy you pick knowing that he’ll boost you up the standings all by himself. He makes an absolute ton of hard contact, and he’s so, so good with the bat, but his ground ball rates have always been high, and he doesn’t pull it very much. So the homers don’t come in bunches.
Just as 12.2% Brl%, and that’s with an ELITE 110.3 EV90. And at this point, we know he’s not trying to “fix” it.
A GB% above 45% every year and never an air pull rate over 14%. He just wants to hit the ball where it’s pitched and hit it very hard. And that works beautifully for him in real life. He got the big contract last year, so there’s no impending free agency that might make him want to have a bust-out 40-homer, 15-steal year.
There’s really only one man at 1B competing with him in the first base ranks this year, and that’s Nick Kurtz. Those are two different player types. Vlad gives you super safe production, while Kurtz offers that 60-homer ceiling, but does have a pretty scary batting average floor with his strikeout rate and lack of ability to hit lefties (so far).
It depends on the league type and your general draft strategy, but I’ll have Vlad as my #1 first baseman this year.
Projection
This is the first post I’ve begun writing after getting the ATC projections in there, so I’ll just be showing you the full projections for every player instead of giving you my model’s results.
Ranking
#1 first baseman
George Springer
Age: 36
Pos: OF
What a season it was from Springer. He might have been the biggest reason for their World Series run, although an injury hurt his end-of-postseason production, and that was tough to see.
At age 34, he hit 32 bombs to go along with a .953 OPS. All of that was way above who he had been in recent years. It was really looking like he was just fading out in the mid-30s, which most players will do. But then he dropped this season on us, and now we don’t really know what to expect from him in 2026.
So… was it luck?
No, it wasn’t luck! A .298 xBA with a .417 xwOBA and that high +0.076 over expectation. He hit the ball hard (107.2 EV90), he hit the ball int he air (38% GB%), and that turned into a 16% Brl%.
His barrel rates by year since 2021:
→ 15.3%, 8.3%, 7.7%, 9.2%, 15.8%
So that’s a big change. Every stat you look at, he improved. And that’s really hard to believe with the age and those previous couple of seasons he had, but it happened. We didn’t imagine it.
Where do we go from here? I don’t know! In these cases, I like to just run away.
That 250 price was a discount last year, and sharps picked up on it. But 104 this year? There’s a ton of risk there. If he reverts back to 2023-2024 form, you’re toast.
Let’s see what the projections are saying:
This gives you an idea of how these systems work. Regression to the mean! We’re all under an .815 OPS projection, and OOPSY is way down there at .779. But we believe in him being a 20+ homer bat with a good shot at double-digit steals. I’ll draft him based on that evaluation, but I imagine somebody in my league will be a lot higher on him than that, so I don’t suspect I’ll get any Springer this year.
Ranking
Alejandro Kirk
Age: 27
Pos: C
Any time a somewhat unexpected team makes a World Series run, you can be pretty sure they had multiple breakout seasons. The Blue Jays got that from Springer and Kirk, among others.
Kirk played 130 games and hit 15 bombs with a high .282 batting average. He’s always been an elite contact hitter, and we saw some of the power production in those 60 games in 2021. But don’t forget, that 2021 season had the Blue Jays playing a bunch of games in minor league stadiums because Canada was still on the COVID stuff. So the power numbers from the Blue Jays were inflated there.
But Kirk showed he can hit dingers last year with his best post-2021 work with the 3.0% HR%.
The thing Kirk does best is make hard contact, and make hard contact often. Not many guys put up sub-12% strikeout rates, and he put up a 106.7 EV90 alongside it.
But a 44% GB% and 10% Air Pull% keep the ball in the yard most of the time. So he’s a better target where the doubles matter a good bit (points leagues, namely).
Kirk’s a really good player and a really good hitter. But the lack of high home run output and the fact that he will sit 20+ games out keeps him a bit further down in the catcher rankings.
Projection
Ranking
Addison Barger
Age: 26
Pos: 3B/OF
Barger was hardly drafted a season ago, and he was one of the key FAAB adds of the 2025 season. And now he’s into the top 200 for 2026.
Here’s what it looked like:
21 bombs on a .757 OPS in 135 games. He found regular reps after having a big May for the Blue Jays, and he was instrumental in their deep playoff run.
Let’s get into the skills, because he’s a guy we need to figure out as a relative unknown right now. And the best way we have to quickly get a feel for a player is the fScores:
Not great! Above-average power, but pretty concerning marks on everything else. But a lot of that was to do with how bad he was in 2024 before this breakout. So let’s get into the 2025 numbers.
An 11.4% Brl% is nice, and the 24.3% K% isn’t all bad. But the contact rate and xBA show you that he’s not likely to be a .270 hitter. The zone contact rate was 82%, which isn’t awful, but it’s not great. It’s better when you see the raw power he has:
→ 107.9 EV90
→ 116.5 MAX EV
He has a ton of bat speed and top-of-the-line arm strength. The arm strength doesn’t matter for fantasy leagues, but it does show you his athleticism.
Any time you’re looking at 93rd percent bat speed and half-decent whiff/strikeout stuff, you have something. But Barger is probably one of these “empty power” guys.
His swing decisions are about league average. He swings a little bit more than the average hitter, and therefore chases a little bit more than average as well. His fly ball rate isn’t bad, but not great at 23%, and the pull rate is about league average.
So he’s one of these guys with good power driven by the bat speed and exit velocities, but the angle and direction profile don’t add any additional homers on top of that. So he’s capped.
There’s a big problem with the splits. He hit just .217/.270/.337 against lefties last year with one homer. They signed Okamamoto, who plays third base, so I think Barger is heading towards being in a strong-side platoon.
He’s a Matt Wallner type for 2026, but with less sure playing time since the Blue Jays are absolutely going for another division crown and probably won’t start slumping players for super long, although the arm strength and defense out there probably do help his case.
Projection
Ranking
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