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# Analysis: Mariners’ Painted Pitches Weakened Blue Jays Bats in Games 1 & 2
- URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/mariners-painted-pitches-weakened-blue-jays-bats-games-1-2/
- Published: 2025-10-15T22:32:04.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-08T05:57:42.000Z
- Author: Callaghan Bluechel
- Tags: Analysis, Mariners, Logan Gilbert, Bryce Miller, ALCS, 2025 MLB Playoffs

After 47 long years of wandering through the desolation, the Seattle Mariners are just two wins away from reaching the promised land, all while they return to the friendly confines of T-Mobile Park for three games and a chance to win the series in front of a long-waiting home crowd. The high-flying Blue Jays offense, who scored more than nine runs a game during their previous four games against the Yankees, have had their wings clipped in the first two games of the ALCS.

This is a Toronto team that had scored the fourth-most runs (798) during the regular season with the best batting average (.265) and on-base percentage (.333) in MLB and baseball’s third best OPS (.761). During that Yankees series, the Jays had looked like a freight train, with a .338/.369/.601 slash line, but that dropped to .131/.232/.197 during the first two games against the Mariners. Almost all of that production came in the first inning of Game 1 and the first two frames of Game 2, with the rest of the on-base figures stemming from three garbage time walks in the second contest.

How have Mariners pitchers done this? It hasn’t stemmed from the usual suspects that an analyst might look to in the StatCast age: Toronto is actually striking out at a *lower* rate in the ALCS (in 13 percent of plate appearances) than they had during the ALDS (in 15 percent of plate appearances). Their walk rate, meanwhile, has increased series-to-series, from 4.4 percent in the ALDS to 11.6 percent in the ALCS. Going against this trend, however (and towards what an analyst would expect), the Jays have hit just one home run in 69 plate appearances during the ALCS, whereas they hit one home run per every 17.8 plate appearances in the ALDS. 

Some of it is luck. Toronto’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP) during the ALDS was .347 while their BABIP during the first two games of the ALCS was .137\. Although BABIP is affected to a degree by line drive rate (allowing line drive hitters to consistently outperform league BABIP), that statistic essentially always regresses to a mean of around .290\. BABIPs significantly above league average indicate good luck while those significantly below league average indicate bad luck. 

Even looking at their StatCast expected numbers, however, shows a decline in performance. Their expected OPS (xOPS) during the ALDS was .850, whereas that figure fell to .672 during the first two games of the ALCS. Something is clearly going on here.

The answer, as the drop in home runs might indicate, lies in the quality of contact. One of StatCast’s most useful statistics in this regard is known as “barrels,” which measures a batted ball whose combination of exit velocity and launch angle has both a .500 or greater batting average and 1.500 or greater slugging percentage. The following diagram of the two inputs shows the “barrel” zone:

\[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1280"\]

![  The barrel zone clusters around 30 degrees of launch angle but widens as exit velocity rises. Image sourced from    Barrel | Glossary | MLB.com   .  ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/barrels-format-original.jpg)

The barrel zone clusters around 30 degrees of launch angle but widens as exit velocity rises. Image sourced from Barrel | Glossary | MLB.com . \[/caption\]

During the ALDS, Toronto managed a “barrel” during 6.9 percent of all plate appearances, whereas they only did so during 2.9 percent of all plate appearances over two days in Toronto. Looking at all their batted balls and hits by launch angle and exit velocity, we can see that although the average launch angles between the two series are similar, the Jays’ batted balls during the ALDS clustered around the “barrel” zone, there was no such clustering during the first two games of the ALCS:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/torvsnyy-ball-data-format-original.png)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/torvssea-batted-ball-data-format-original.png)

This, of course, begs the following question: why? The Blue Jays offense is built around contact, specifically pelting the outfield with line drives—that is what has given them their league-leading average and on-base percentage. Simply put, the Mariners have been eliciting bad contact by keeping pitches around the edges of the plate, whereas the Yankees allowed a whole lot of contact in the heart of the zone. The following are two heatmaps that show where the Blue Jays made contact during the ALDS and during the ALCS:

\[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2000"\]

![  There is a clear clustering around the lower middle of the zone when the Jays made contact in the ALDS, whereas their contact against Seattle in the ALCS has also clustered around the left edge (facing the pitcher).  ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/heatmap-comp-1-format-original.png)

There is a clear clustering around the lower middle of the zone when the Jays made contact in the ALDS, whereas their contact against Seattle in the ALCS has also clustered around the left edge (facing the pitcher). \[/caption\]

It’s apparent where the differences are. Mariners pitchers have been hugging the edges of the plate, especially the gloveside edge of a right-handed pitcher. The following diagram combines the two and simplifies the data into four zones—the red diagonal lines represent where Toronto made contact often during the ALDS but not during the ALCS, the blue horizontal lines represent the reverse of that, and the thick black vertical lines represent where the Jays often connected in both series:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/simple-diff-main-format-original.png)

The difference becomes even more stark when comparing contact on fastballs. Toronto absolutely killed pitches of a fastball type (four-seamers, two-seamers/sinkers, and cutters) during the ALDS, with a .368 batting average and .598 slugging percentage whenever they made contact with such a pitch during those four games. Their average exit velocity on these fastballs was 90.5 miles per hour, while they hit the ball over 95 miles per hour (a “hard hit” according to StatCast) 42.2 percent of the time. There was a “barrel” during 7.8 of their plate appearances, around the rate of Jorge Polanco, Addison Barger, or Will Smith (the catcher) during the 2025 season. On contact with Mariners fastballs, however, their average and slugging dropped to .118 and .206, respectively, with an 86.5 miles per hour average exit velocity and a 35.3 percent hard hit rate. The “barrel” rate against the heater in the first two games of the ALCS was the same as their general rate in those games, 2.9 percent.

Looking at the fastball contact locations, we can see even more differentiation than previously between where the Jays made contact against the Yankees and where they did so against the Mariners:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/simple-diff-fastball-format-original.png)

Will the Mariners’ pitching dominance against Toronto continue in Game 3? It’s impossible to know for sure. The Blue Jays will undoubtedly try to adjust, either to the running fastballs away or (more likely) to the pitches near the top of the zone, flattening out their swing to hop on the type of pitches they have been popping up.

The trend will certainly be tested. Two more good fastballers will be taking the hill for Seattle in the next two contests, as George Kirby gets the ball in Game 3 and Luis Castillo will tread the rubber in Game 4\.