If the Toronto Blue Jays are going to come close to replicating their stellar 2025 campaign, they are going to need some unexpected breaks.
That’s not an indictment of the team they’ve put together for the season, or a statement meant to put last year’s run on a pedestal. (Jays season-opening coverage on Friday: Blue Jays Central begins at 5:30 p.m., game at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT.)
It just describes the nature of the sport and the state of the majors. Outside of perhaps the star-studded Los Angeles Dodgers teams, hoping to make deep playoff runs requires a few players to beat all reasonable expectations and elevate their club above what the world understood them to be. Right now, FanGraphs only projects one team (the Dodgers) to top 90 wins in 2026, but undoubtedly, at least a few more will, as they have special years like the one the Blue Jays enjoyed in 2025.
The Blue Jays could easily be in that group once again, but it will take some standouts delivering more than it would be reasonable to project. Often, those players are young guys who find a gear they’ve never shown before, or rookies who hit the ground running.
Toronto is a veteran team, and many of its best prospects are in the lower minors, which leaves it with fewer obvious breakout candidates than some other clubs. That said, last year it got an expectation-shattering performance from George Springer, who was in his age-35 season and had declined significantly in the years before 2025. Breakouts are, by definition, hard to foresee.
Arguably, that makes trying to predict them an impossible task, but that doesn’t mean we won’t give it a shot. Below are some logical breakout candidates for the 2026 Blue Jays — and what a breakout would actually entail for them.
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Addison Barger
2025 stats: .243/.301/.454 in 502 PA with 21 HR for 2.2 fWAR
What would a breakout mean? Barger already proved himself as an above-average option against right-handed pitching and a legitimate power threat in 2025. Taking things to the next level for him would mean becoming a reliable middle-of-the-lineup thumper. If he reached 30-plus home runs with a wRC+ of 125 or better, that would be a big step up. Less than 40 qualified hitters managed to meet either of those standards in 2025; hitting both marks seems like a fair definition of a breakout.
How he could get there: The simplest answer here is by doing what he’s done most recently. Barger was a force in the 2025 playoffs, slashing .367/.441/.583 — good for a 188 wRC+. That mark was the 23rd-best among the 349 hitters with 60-plus plate appearances in a post-season run in MLB history.
Then, in the spring, Barger has produced a 155 wRC+ thanks largely to a .595 SLG fueled by some gargantuan blasts.
A common thread for Barger in both the playoffs and the spring is that he’s been selective at the dish, walking at a 12.1 per cent clip between the two periods — almost double his 2025 regular season rate (7.2 per cent).
It’s small-sample stuff, but if he’s able to sustain some improved patience, it could unlock a new level of production. Barger’s bat speed and ability to make hard contact have always been elite. If it’s paired with improved discipline, he could not only earn a few more free passes, but also get himself into more favourable counts to unleash his A-swing.
Cody Ponce
2025 stats (KBO): 12.55 K/9, 2.04 BB/9, 0.50 HR/9 in 180.2 IP with a 1.89 ERA and 2.15 FIP
What would a breakout mean? This is a tough one, because Ponce doesn’t have an obvious baseline to judge a breakout against. He’s clearly a different pitcher today than the guy who posted a 5.86 ERA in 55.1 innings of work with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the early 2020s. He also can’t be expected to replicate his otherworldly KBO stats against the best hitters in the world.
For lack of a better mechanism, we’ll use his contract to set expectations. If he’s able to produce on-field value that approximately doubles the AAV on his contract in 2026 ($10 million), that seems like a breakout. Last season, 42 starting pitchers were worth $20 million or more, according to FanGraphs’ value estimator. If Ponce is a top-50 starter in the majors, the Blue Jays would have to be thrilled with their investment.
How he could get there: Logging a significant workload would be the best way to reach the breakout bar we’ve set (which was approximately 2.5 fWAR in 2025 and will be similar this season). Toronto has to be encouraged by the 180.2 innings Ponce pitched last year, but, notably, he hasn’t topped 137.2 in any other pro or college season. He’s also a pitcher, and the health of any pitcher is unpredictable — as the Blue Jays have been discovering in recent weeks.
Putting injury risk aside, Ponce would have to be rather effective to keep his rotation spot all year and produce the above-average results necessary for a 2.5-ish fWAR season. That’d undoubtedly be a stretch goal for a starter who hasn’t made it work at the MLB level yet, but Ponce’s spring showing included some encouraging signs.
Not only did the 31-year-old manage a 0.66 ERA in five outings, but he also featured a fastball that topped out at 97.6 m.p.h. and averaged 95.5 m.p.h. as well as an impressive kick-change that generated a whiff rate of 43.5 per cent.
It will be interesting to see whether Ponce’s cutter can provide a strong glove-side complement to his fading changeup and how important his curve will be to his repertoire, but the arsenal he’s been working on across the Pacific Ocean made a strong impression in the spring.
Jesús Sánchez
2025 stats: .237/.304/.395 in 497 PA with 14 HR for 1.0 fWAR
What would a breakout mean? A notable step up for Sánchez could be achieving career-highs in three important statistics: home runs, wRC+ and fWAR. If he can reach 20 homers, a 115 wRC+ and 2.0 fWAR, he would be setting career-highs across the board and establishing himself as more than just a complementary corner outfield bat.
How he could get there: The most obvious way Sánchez could take a step is by showing some competence against left-handing pitchers, considering he’s slashed a putrid .181/.231/.289 against them in his career.
Unfortunately for the 28-year-old, it’s unlikely that a Blue Jays team in win-now mode with two right-handed outfielders on the bench (Davis Schneider and Myles Straw) is going to give him much runway to work out the kinks.
That means Sánchez will have to find his way to a breakout by other means. One way he could get there is by continuing the trend of improved contact he began in 2025.
Even an average strikeout rate is a good place to start for a hitter who produced 79th percentile exit velocity driven by 93rd percentile bat speed last season. Putting more balls in play could be potent for a player with as much juice as Sánchez.
The outfielder has never been able to turn his ability to hit balls extremely hard into consistent power production, but perhaps working with a Blue Jays hitting coaching team that got so much out of its players in 2025 can help.
Mason Fluharty
2025 stats: 9.57 K/9, 4.10 BB/9, 1.03 HR/9 in 52.2 IP with a 4.44 ERA and 3.97 FIP for 0.2 fWAR
What would a breakout mean? Relievers are so volatile that breakouts and falls from grace are commonplace. However, Fluharty might ascend into a different type of bullpen arm, one that is less of a situational lefty and more of a high-leverage option. That’s what we’re talking about here, with strong statistics like an ERA well below four driving that.
How he could get there: One way Fluharty can get there is with a little bit better luck, as his ERA in 2025 (4.44) was well above his xERA (3.30).
Randomness had a lot to do with that disparity, but Fluharty was also far, far more successful with the bases empty and struggled with runners on.
The root cause of these results is unclear, but it’s likely that Fluharty won’t be hurt as disproportionately as men on base in 2026, which should mean fewer runs crossing the plate.
Fluharty’s spring also suggests he’s an improved pitcher this year, and a step forward wouldn’t be totally reliant on more even sequencing of hits against. His velocity on his primary fastball (which is a cutter) sat at 90.9 m.p.h. in Grapefruit League action, up from 90.2 during the regular season, and perhaps more importantly, he added a new pitch — a changeup — to his repertoire.
Last year, everything the rookie threw broke to the glove side:
The new change will give him an arm-side option that could be especially effective tailing away from right-handed opponents. If Fluharty can ascend the bullpen pecking order in 2026, that addition to his repertoire is likely to be a reason why.
