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The fix should be obvious. If the Jays want their offence to become a strength, they need to add at least a couple of big power bats. Or maybe it’s not that simple, based on general manager Ross Atkins’ recent comments.

“Power is low-hanging fruit to add,” Atkins said last week. “I think in today’s game you also have to be cognizant of strikeouts when you do that. I think it’s also something that we have been working very hard to understand, what that means in the playoffs.

“It’s clear that contact is exceptionally important in the playoffs. That’s proven. So balancing that with power additions is obviously very important. But I don’t think it’s as simple as just plug in a power bat.”

That’s the wrong message to be sending in this city, where almost every memorable post-season moment involved home runs: Roberto Alomar’s homer off Dennis Eckersley in the 1992 American League Championship Series; Joe Carter’s walk-off in the 1993 World Series; Jose Bautista’s bat flip heard around the world in the 2015 division series against Texas; Edwin Encarnacion’s walk-off in the 2016 wild-card game versus Baltimore. 

Power has long proven to be a difference-maker. Teams that out-homer their opponents were only 7-6 this post-season entering Wednesday but that winning percentage should increase as the sample size ticks up. There have already been memorable blasts from Pete Alonso, Kerry Carpenter and Shohei Ohtani.

 revealed that teams posted a .780 winning percentage from 1969-2020 when out-homering their opponents. In almost every year, the percentage of runs scored via homers increased in the playoffs compared to the regular season. Power leads to wins in October.

Of course, Atkins isn’t suggesting home runs are irrelevant. He’s just saying that the benefits are offset when they’re accompanied with a lot of swing and miss. There is some truth in that, but this year teams that finish with fewer strikeouts than their opponents are 8-7.

“If a power bat is also a very complete hitter — right-handed, left-handed pitching doesn’t matter — their on-base, their contact rate is high, whether it’s velo and spin and carry at the top of the zone versus sink and slide, then, sure, one hitter can do that,” Atkins said. “But there’s just so many variables, and it’s such complex equation of scoring runs.

“Then taking another step to talking about the complexity of just hitting and offence, I think there’s more to it than power bats, but we’re certainly open to adding a power bat.”

Atkins and his staff might be overthinking this. If there was one strength of the Jays lineup this season, it was the ability to make contact. They struck out just 1,223 times, the sixth-fewest in the majors. Yet they were among the worst in runs scored.

Sacrificing contact for power should be a no-brainer. with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. the only Jays player to hit 20 or more homers this season. Six of MLB’s top 25 home run hitters are set to become free agents: Anthony Santander (44), Juan Soto (41), Alonso (34), Teoscar Hernández (33), Willy Adames (32) and Tyler O’Neill (31). A seventh, Oakland’s Brent Rooker (39) is a candidate to be traded.

The Jays’ unwillingness to state the obvious can be tied to the off-season that followed the 2022 playoffs. That’s when the front office pivoted away from a team that was built around run scoring to focus on run prevention.

The end result has been the erosion of slugging. The Jays led the majors with 262 homers in 2021 and were third with 846 runs. A year later, they were seventh with 200 homers and fourth with 775 runs. After the change in philosophy, the offence plummeted to 16th in homers (188) and 14th in runs (746) in 2023. This year was even worse.

The Jays can talk all they want about being more “thoughtful” in how they generate runs, but if the power isn’t there, the wins won’t be either. The off-season strategy doesn’t need to be complicated. This team needs power and if that comes with some additional swing and miss, so be it.