Daulton Varsho is a 29-year-old, left handed hitting, center fielder. The Jays picked him up in a trade with the Diamondbacks, in December 2022, for Lourdes Gurriel and Gabriel Moreno when they were trying to remake the team.
I don’t know that we were extremely excited about the trade. Daulton didn’t have the best year with the bat in 2022, but the team was trying to improve their defense and Daulton was a huge step up defensively, even though we added Kevin Kiermaier just nine days earlier.
Advertisement
In the three seasons since the trade, he’s hit .221/.288/.428 with 58 home runs, 12 triples, 110 walks and 349 strikeouts. With the defense factored in he’s got an 11.3 bWAR.
Last year, he missed a fair bit of time with a few different injuries: missing time after off-season shoulder surgery, had a hamstring strain and took a pitch off the hand. Kind of an outlier season for him, he doesn’t have a history of time missed because of injuries. Hopefully he won’t continue to have injury issues.
Also, last year, he found power. He hit 20 home runs in just 71 games, had a slugging average over .500 (.548) for the first time.
And, of course, once again, his defense was outstanding. He had a +9 Outs Above average, while playing just 550 innings in center field. This catch was ridiculous:
Advertisement
View Link
Catching a ball while facing the other way, after falling, is hard to believe.
There is no end to video of his great catches.
His throwing arm was not great, after the surgery. And I don’t know that it will be much better this year, the few times I’ve seen him throw this spring didn’t inspire confidence. Last year, Baseball Savant had him 95th percentile for range but 5th percentile for arm strength (in 2024, they had him at 40th percentile). Hopefully it will bounce back some, but as long as the range is there, the arm strength is forgivable.
Steamer thinks that Daulton will play in 117 games, and hit .226/.293/.430 with 23 home runs, 7 steals and a 1.7 fWAR. That’s a huge drop in slugging.
Read the full article here
