José Berríos has been the ace the Blue Jays have needed early in the season

The Toronto Blue Jays have been spoiled in recent seasons with single-season pitching performances that have garnered legitimate Cy Young attention. Take your pick — 2020 Hyun-Jin Ryu, 2021 Robbie Ray, 2022 Alek Manoah, or 2023 Kevin Gausman. All four have finished within the top three in Cy Young voting, including Ray winning it three years ago, and we’re well on our way to seeing another vote-getter this season, if not another winner.

Enter Jose Berrios, a.k.a. La Makina, who has dominated his first month of baseball on the mound this season. When describing the play of professional athletes, some people use words such as “unbelievable” or “amazing” in a tongue-in-cheek manner. However, I think I deserved to use the word dominant — defined by the Oxford dictionary as “have a commanding influence on; exercise control over” — to define Berrios thus far.

The ninth-year veteran right-hander has made four starts this season, posting a 3-0 record, a 1.05 ERA, 0.974 WHIP, a 7.4 K/9, and an MLB-best 25.2 innings pitched. He has yet to have an outing last less than six innings, two runs is the most he’s allowed in a single outing this year, and with two consecutive scoreless performances, he’s currently working on a streak of 50 straight outs without allowing a run.

With Kevin Gausman fighting a shoulder injury through Spring Training, Berrios earned the Opening Day nod and has seized the opportunity of being the team’s #1 starter since. It’s making the seven-year, $131 million contract extension he signed following the 2021 season look like one of Ross Atkins’ best, a topic that wasn’t as popular following Jose’s poor 2022 campaign. That season, one that witnessed him lead the league in hits and earned runs allowed, has quickly become the anomaly in his career, as he bounced back with a Berrios-esque 2023 season and has clearly looked impressive this season.

Berrios stands for so much of what baseball is all about. Whether it’s the statistical consistency (five seasons of 30+ starts and six seasons with an ERA of 4.00 or less), not spending a day on the IL since making it to the major leagues, or his ability to defend at his position (see his Gold Glove award from last year), Berrios made his contract extension a no-brainer. Atkins himself even admitted following the execution of the deal that he reached out to Berrios’ camp around 48 hours after the ’21 season concluded – keeping him around just had to happen.

Men lie, women lie, parents lie, and bosses lie, but the film and the numbers don’t. Words can only say so much, so let’s take a look at how Berrios has taken things to a greater level.

For starters, his sinker has improved significantly between 2022 and now. Whether it was his sinker or four-seam fastball, both pitches became attractive to any and all batters in ’22 and the start of ’23. Fortunately, his slurve and changeup were far more effective, but shortening his pitch mix from four pitches to only two wouldn’t have been the best way for Berrios to go.

Berrios allowed a .319 batting average and a .452 SLG with his sinker in 2022, but this season, those figures are sitting at .250 and .278, respectively. He’s become a lot more comfortable throwing this pitch to left-handed hitters; 33% of his sinkers this season have gone to lefties, several ticks up from the 27.9% number he posted two years ago. His sinker has natural glove-side movement to it, so being able to lure it into the zone against southpaws after the pitch starts inside makes it even more effective. The third pitch in the clip below is one of the best examples. Just nasty.