We always knew the Toronto Blue Jays were slow, but now we have proof. (AP)

When a new baseball statistic comes into existence there is always the exciting possibility that it proves truly illuminating and challenges the way we think about the game. More often than not, however, new metrics give us certainty about what we already suspected.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Certainty and precision are valuable commodities, even if they aren’t very sexy. On Tuesday Statcast released Sprint Speed, a new statistic that’s more about confirmation than discovery. When Billy Hamilton is ranked the fastest man in baseball while Albert Pujols and Brian McCann are deemed the slowest, the findings don’t feel revolutionary — but they are valuable.

From a Toronto Blue Jays standpoint, the new information confirms the general consensus. We already know that the Blue Jays are a slow team that don’t run the bases well, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that they are below league-average in sprint speed at almost every position.

Even so, it is interesting to take a look at the particulars. The chart below shows where Blue Jays players ranked relative to their positional counterparts league-wide. Blue Jays show up as the coloured dots.

A couple of observations:

It’s hard to pick up from the visual alone, but Kendrys Morales (24.7 ft/sec) actually ranks a touch higher than Justin Smoak (24.6) which counts as a minor surprise. To the eye test, Morales looks like a solid candidate for slowest runner in the game.

Devon Travis is sneaky quick. He’s not a burner, but he rarely gets credit for what he does with his legs and he’s significantly faster than Ryan Goins.

Jose Bautista is in his own league when it comes to slow right fielders. His sprint speed is 25.3 ft/s while the next slowest man at his position sits at 26.1 ft/s. Players of Bautista’s age tend to get moved off the outfield and if the Blue Jays’ needs had been different he’d probably be a 1B/DH by now.

Troy Tulowitzki is also on an island with a 0.4 ft/s gap between him and the hardly fleet-footed Asdrubal Cabrera. The fact he’s able to play a solid shortstop with such a speed deficit is a testament to his arm strength and remarkable accuracy.

Kevin Pillar is an above-average runner, but not for a centre fielder. He deserves credit for the first step, instincts, and positioning that allow him to do a decided above-average job at his position.

There’s nothing here that is surprising, but it is comforting to know that neither our eyes nor the previous statistics deceived us when it came to the Blue Jays’ speed. There are no two ways about it: this is a slow team.