{"id":659730,"date":"2026-04-02T23:04:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/659730\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T23:04:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:04:19","slug":"strong-week-from-new-star-is-encouraging-for-blue-jays-offense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/659730\/","title":{"rendered":"Strong Week From New Star is Encouraging for Blue Jays’ Offense"},"content":{"rendered":"

With six games in the books for the Toronto Blue Jays, the team has had an interesting start to the season. Fortunately, they have seen some early dividends from a free agent signing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To begin the year, the Blue Jays were able to pick up right where they left off with an impressive sweep of the Athletics. Toronto saw a nice mix of good pitching and strong offense in the three-game set, and the campaign couldn\u2019t have started out on a better note.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Following that series was another one at home against the Colorado Rockies. As one of the worst teams in the league last year, it was shocking to see the Blue Jays drop two out of three games to them at home. That very well could be a series that Toronto looks back on in a few months and is scratching their heads on how they lost it. However, weird things can happen in the early part of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While there may have been some inconsistencies so far, the Blue Jays should be very pleased with the production from a new addition so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keegan Matheson of MLB<\/a> recently wrote about one of the top takeaways from the first week of the season for the Blue Jays being the performance of their new third baseman, Kazuma Okamoto.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Strong Start is Encouraging\"Toronto<\/p>\n

Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Kazuma Okamoto | John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

This offseason, while Toronto spent a lot of money to improve, there was undoubtedly some concern about the decision to let star shortstop Bo Bichette walk. The All-Star slugger was one of the best hitters for the team in 2025 and losing that production was significant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Furthermore, while the team did appear to give it a strong effort to go after Kyle Tucker, they ultimately fell short. However, what was a possible indication that the team wasn\u2019t interested in giving Bichette a long-term deal was the signing of Okamoto.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The talented slugger<\/a> was one of the top free agents coming over from Japan, and so far, he has looked very good. In six games, the 29-year-old has slashed .292\/.370\/.542 with two home runs and three RBI so far. While the sample size is small, it is very encouraging to see.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Okamoto felt like a key part of the offense when the team elected not to bring back Bichette, and so far, he has been the better of the two players for a much cheaper cost. While time will tell if he can continue his strong play, the early results are good.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With six games in the books for the Toronto Blue Jays, the team has had an interesting start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[5,377,2554,4,282,70,2553],"class_list":{"0":"post-659730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blue-jays","10":"tag-bluejays","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-toronto","13":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","14":"tag-torontobluejays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116337618885724936","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}