During his 14 years as a pro, including four big league stints, Justin Lehr lived many of the different experiences a pitcher can have. His career, however, predated the game’s data revolution, and he sometimes wonders how he would have performed if he knew then what he knows now.
“If there was one piece of information I could have had as a player, it would have been, what was my best pitch, in what situation and to what location,” said the Blue Jays’ recently hired minor league pitching director.
“If I knew that about my entire arsenal, I would have been a better pitcher.”
Using all available means to arm pitchers with information on how they’re most likely to succeed is central to Lehr’s approach to his new role, an organizational first for the Blue Jays.
He joins the Blue Jays from the Giants, where he was pitching coordinator, after a gut-wrenching 2024 in the Toronto system, when seven pitchers had reconstructive elbow surgery, including top prospects Ricky Tiedemann, Brandon Barriera and Landen Maroudis.
The injuries were one concern, but so too was a developmental gap in the supply of capable arms for the big league club. Last year, just six of the 34 pitchers the Blue Jays used came through the system, logging just 213 innings, a mere 15% of their total.
Among the issues identified internally was a priority imbalance between pitch design/stuff and pitchability, and the latter is among Lehr’s teaching tenets.
“To simplify the vision, we have to be really good at laying the foundation of good-count leverage,” Lehr said. “Without that good foundation of count-leverage and managing counts, it’s really tougher to solve for damage if they’re not putting themselves in good position.”