Reason for optimism: More than any other team in the American League, the Blue Jays are made to dominate the regular season.
Reason for pessimism: It might not be a team built to do the same in the postseason.
Occasionally (the Boston Red Sox last year and the Baltimore Orioles this year as examples), teams that legitimately believe they have a chance to make the playoffs enter the season with a roster designed to win a bunch of 7-5 games. As scoring has dropped in baseball over the last five years (largely due to an increased use of bullpen specialists and a rise in the level of performance by No. 1 starters), that's been a foolish strategy -- and one I've been eager to bet against.
Toronto enters this season with that same style of roster, just with one major difference -- the Blue Jays are more than equipped to pull it off.
Fans and front offices alike often overestimate a team's ability to win slugfests, but when the Blue Jays, coming off a season where they scored 891 runs, think they can outscore anyone by a run or more a game, they've got the empirical evidence to back it up. That ridiculous number of runs scored (891) represents 127 more runs than their closest competitor and 194 more than the average of the other 14 American League teams. Conveniently, that's more than one run per game -- by a healthy margin, no less.
Aside from bringing so much quality lumber to the stadium that the team could be sponsored by Georgia Pacific, Toronto has another, much less-heralded reason they can dominate the league despite a mediocre rotation: In 2015, the Blue Jays had the beat team defense in the majors, by a wide margin. Forget what FanGraphs (23rd-ranked defense, via UZR) or even Baseball Reference (seventh-ranked defense, via Baseball Information Solutions) says, and trust my calculations (and Baseball Prospectus), which looks not at the sum of the individual ratings of each player, but the effectiveness of the entire unit -- and that calculation easily sees Toronto as 2015's best defense.
No other team prevented batted balls from turning into baserunners, or erased existing baserunners, better than the Blue Jays.
Here's a quick example as to why the unit approach to defensive evaluation is vastly superior at reflecting what actually happened on the field. FanGraphs had Texas with a better defense last year than Toronto, claiming the Rangers saved 13.5 more runs defensively than the Blue Jays. How does that make sense? Both teams recorded almost exactly 3,000 outs on batted balls (3,015 for Texas and 3,002 for Toronto), but in the process of making essentially the same amount of outs Texas needed to have 140 more balls hit into the field of play than Toronto.
Another way to look at it: If the Blue Jays had only converted 14 of the next 140 balls hit at them into outs, they still would have been better than Texas at preventing baserunners; they also erased 15 more of those baserunners via pick-off or caught stealing, but that starts to get more into the corners of this calculation.
In addition to their batted-ball efficiency, Russell Martin is one of the best pitch-framers in baseball year after year -- and Toronto's bullpen, unlike the rotation, is far from mediocre. The bullpen's ERA, at 3.50, might suggest only mildly above-average results -- but its eighth-ranked strikeout rate and top-ranked walk rate are more suggestive of a unit that should've had a low-3.00 ERA. Most of the bullpen returns, with the only notable swap being Drew Storen replacing Liam Hendriks as part of the back-end trio.
You'll notice that there is an absence of discussion in this preview of the individual hitters in Toronto's lineup. That's because what they did as a team last year speaks for itself. Since 2000, there have been a number of "take and rake" teams that have slugged their way to offensive dominance, but I don't recall any having the overall contact skills the Blue Jays exhibited last year. You certainly know, that having hit the most home runs any team has hit since 2010, Toronto led the league in slugging.
With so many dangerous hitters, it probably doesn't surprise you that they were second in walk rate -- that's rake and take, respectively. Usually, a third prevalent outcome from teams that hit for power and walk a lot is strikeouts, so you might be stunned to know Toronto's hitters had the fifth-lowest strikeout rate in the majors -- on par with light-power teams such San Francisco and Atlanta.
In short, top-to-bottom lineup power, excellent defense and a bullpen full of relatively high-strikeout, low-walk guys is more than enough to overcome a deficiency in starting pitching. Toronto played to the level of a 100-win team last season and, other than the loss of David Price's 11 superb starts and Mark Buehrle's consistently efficient 32 starts, there is nothing to replace.
It's fine to expect some regression from a team that lapped the entire league in runs scored, but I find it shocking that oddsmakers would favor the Red Sox to win more games than Toronto, who have an 86.5-win hurdle (one fewer than Boston's).
Given that I labeled Boston's total wins market "fair," it follows that this is a strong "over" play. The starting pitching weakness might be a problem in the postseason, which is why I'm not calling for Toronto to play in the World Series, but this should be the most consistently powerful team in the American League all season.
2016 projection: 91-71 (first, AL East)
Bet recommendation: Over