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Finding command, changing approach key to Berrios bounceback

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DUNEDIN, Fla. — Figuring out what went wrong for Jose Berrios in 2022 might take an abacus and a whole lot of time.

There were a number of things that conspired against the 28-year-old righty last season, eventually leading to a career-worst year and a bloated 5.23 ERA.

That number was the worst ERA for a qualified starter in all of baseball, and it wasn’t really close, with Kyle Gibson checking in at 5.05. They were the only two pitchers who were hit hard enough — and managed to stay in a rotation — to cross the 5.00 ERA threshold last season.

The reason Berrios’ season was so confounding is the previously pristine track record of innings-eating mid-3.00 ERAs, as he had posted a combined 3.74 ERA across the five seasons before the 2022 nightmare.

Berrios’ strikeouts dropped to 7.8 per nine, down from 9.2 the previous five seasons.

His hits allowed and homers also jumped, with Berrios giving up a career-worst 29 bombs and 199 hits across his 172 frames.

Fewer strikeouts, more hits, and lots of homers isn’t exactly a recipe for success.

But Berrios wasn’t consistently bad.

Actually, he was usually pretty good every fifth day, providing quality starts in 17 of 32 outings, tying him for 26th in baseball alongside teammate Kevin Gausman and ahead of pitchers who had great seasons like Dylan Cease (16), Shohei Ohtani (16), Carlos Rodon (16) and Zack Wheeler (16).

Consistently inconsistent is the best way to describe Berrios’ campaign.

There were some highs, but when Berrios got hit, he really got crushed, and the lows were rock bottom.

But Berrios has come into camp this spring with a couple of physical tweaks and, most importantly, a positive mindset that manager John Schneider has noticed coming off a tough year.

“Trying to get a little bit more extension on his stride, which he’s done,” Schneider said. “Nothing drastic, we’re talking a couple of inches. I think he’s in a great spot with where his stuff plays. I’ve said it forever — his track record kind of speaks for itself. We’re comfortable, he’s comfortable with where he is right now with everything, so just looking forward to a regular year out of him.

“For a guy with his experience, track record, stuff, he’s in a great mental spot right now.”

If you’re looking for reasons under the hood for the down year, there are a few.

With Berrios’ stuff mostly intact in terms of velocity — his 94-mph four-seamer and sinker have been the exact same range for three years now, up about a tick since 2018 and 2019 — it came down to location and opposing teams essentially taking up a new gameplan against the righty.

Berrios’ hard-hit rate jumped 5.5 per cent overall from 2021 to a career-worst 43.8 per cent, but left-handed hitters especially did damage and the four-seamer was the culprit with the hard-hit rate moving from 29 per cent to 44 per cent.

Overall, Berrios’ four-seamer was hammered to the tune of a .349 batting average and .618 slugging percentage.

Against right-handed hitters, it was the sinker, as Berrios threw way too many of them in the heart of the plate and it led to his batting average against on that pitch against righties landing at .333, compared to .190 in 2021.

Hitters ambushed Berrios early in the count on all of his offerings, and with some of those pitches finding more of the plate in 2022, damage ensued.

Add all this up and it’s actually giving the Blue Jays and Schneider a pretty good feeling that Berrios can make some approach adjustments — find the edges of the plate more early in counts — and turn things around after a long winter of research and tinkering.

“Yeah, it’s more gameplan, I think,” Schneider said. “As a whole, you probably saw we were, to a fault, in the middle of the zone as a staff early in counts and, I think, with Jose it just came down to his misses were in really hittable spots last year. In years past, it was kind of pitching to a smaller part of the zone early and, I think, (in 2022) he was trying to pitch to a little bit of a bigger part of the zone and the mistakes just didn’t get missed. That happens. There’s luck that goes into it, too, and big-league hitters are big-league hitters for a reason. I think it was an outlier thing for him.”

With at least four more seasons to go on the lucrative seven-year, $131-million extension he signed last off-season — Berrios can opt out after 2026 if he chooses, but otherwise the deal runs through 2028 — the Jays are sure hoping it was an outlier and not a sign of things to come.