When the Toronto Blue Jays acquired starting pitcher Jose Soriano from the Los Angeles Angels before the trade deadline, the team's organizational pitching philosophy became clear:

The Jays do not care if you have control issues, so long as you possess the ability to miss bats - and miss them very well.

Over the offseason, the Blue Jays signed Dylan Cease to a seven-year deal worth $210 million. Cease was known as one of the best strikeout artists in the sport, but he was also a guy with known walk problems. He had the American League in walks in both 2020 and 2022, and was right near the top of the leaderboard again in 2023.

But again, the Blue Jays clearly decided they could work with his profile. Could they refine his command, at least a little bit? Maybe. But did they think they could elevate his swing-and-miss profile? Almost assuredly.

The old saying is "you can give up walks, or you can give up hits, but you can't give up both." And the Jays are clearly OK with Cease's walk issues, because he's near the top of the AL again (51), but he also leads the AL in hits/9, homers/9 and strikeouts/9. He limits contact.

And the same thing is evident with Soriano, who is 27 years old. He doesn't strike out as many people as Cease (127 K's in 123 innings), and he also has control issues (57, most in AL), but the "stuff" is clearly good enough for the Blue Jays to look the other way on that.

Again, it's evident what kind of profile the Blue Jays value. They want "stuffy" pitchers who can strike people out and reduce hard contact - or contact at all - and they don't mind if you issue some free passes along the way. But the question is: Is that a big risk?

Maybe I'm just too old-timey to see the vision, but I actually don't love the Blue Jays going all-in on this road. I still believe that the most effective way to get outs is to throw strikes, consistently, and to be ahead in the count, consistently.

Of course, the more you are in the zone, the more chances you have to get hit, and get touched up. And your "strike throwers" have a few of those games a season too, but I tend to believe it's best to dominate the zone, get ahead, work quickly, and try to give your team six or seven innings each time out.

While we've certainly seen Cease be brilliant - and we could see the same for Soriano in the future - we've also seen multiple starts where Cease is at 100 pitches through five innings, or at 110 pitches into the fifth.

Those walks lead to traffic which leads to stress, and stress leads to runs - or shorter performances. And that leads to an overtaxed bullpen.

And while Cease is one of the best in baseball at pitching this way, is it smart to try to replicate it throughout your staff?

To me, it seems like Cease is an outlier that should remain an outlier, but we'll see if I'm proven wrong over time.

The Blue Jays will finish out the series with the Houston Astros on Wednesday. The two teams have split the first two games of the series.