Revamped Blue Jays hitting program helping Varsho find ‘clues’ of past success

TORONTO — Over the winter, as David Popkins started constructing relationships along with his gamers and Daulton Varsho recovered from shoulder surgical procedure, the brand new hitting coach took a deep dive into the Gold Glove centre-fielder’s swing. Whereas reluctant to share too many particulars, he approaches the method like a detective on a case, analyzing each swing a participant has taken to discern the bodily commonalities when he’s shifting nicely and when he’s struggling, figuring out which components type a batter’s best basis within the field.

“Every time a player has success, there are typically clues that are left behind — success tends to do that,” Popkins explains. “And it’s trying to see in these multiple windows in different time periods, how has he moved and are the moves similar? Like, hey, when he moves really small into his back-side, it’s been good this year, this year and this year. Completely different swings, but the same movement. You collect as many of those as you can, and you see the starting point that’s natural to him.”

It is in that course of that the seeds of Varsho’s energy surge since coming back from the injured listing — six homers and three doubles amongst his 12 hits in 14 video games — had been planted, and a wider development for the Blue Jays’ complete hitting program is happening.

The Varsho examine revealed that the 28-year-old produces greatest when his bat stays vertical as he hundreds up for his swing, permitting him to higher maintain his bat above the ball and attain extra pitches. Final season, it flattened out an excessive amount of, resulting in a swing aircraft that always ended up underneath the ball.

Up to now in 2025, in a pattern of 57 plate appearances that’s notable however too small to attract definitive conclusions from, his common exit velocity of 93.2 m.p.h. is almost six miles an hour above his profession charge, he’s set a brand new exit velocity excessive at 113.9 m.p.h., has a sweet-spot share of 38.2 per cent that’s six per cent higher than his profession mark and a hard-hit charge of fifty per cent, a significant leap from his 36.5 per cent common.

There have been trade-offs — his strikeout charge of 36.5 per cent is almost 11 per cent increased than his common, whereas his 5.3 per cent stroll charge is down greater than three per cent — however Varsho feels he is extra in a position to get his “top hand to work above the baseball” which helps “my swing generally stay in the zone for a longer time.”

In flip, that provides him “little things that you manipulate to try to get to that feel,” so he’s “able to go A-to-B and be basically short and quick” to the baseball.

These basic modifications are why supervisor John Schneider believes the injury Varsho has produced is extra sustainable than sizzling streaks in years previous.

“It’s just allowing his barrel to be a little bit more accurate,” says Schneider. “I know Spring Training is tough to gauge, but you kind of saw it there, and guys figure out things at different times. I’m not comparing him to Jose Bautista, but I think that’s the one that jumps out as you figure something out mechanically, and it just gives you a better shot every single time. So, I think that Varsh is still like an untapped resource offensively. He’s got all the all the traits that lead you to think that he’s going to be really damn good and I think he’s starting to get there.”

The best way he’s getting there’s additionally vital for a Blue Jays workforce that remade its hitting division over the winter, led by the hirings of Popkins and assistant Lou Iannotti.

Not solely did Popkins arrive as a contemporary voice, however with the Minnesota Twins, he helped develop a motion-capture course of and reporting device, and he introduced that know-how to the Blue Jays. He’s since labored with the membership’s bio-mechanics division, “who did a great job making that very quickly, starting to catch us up to where we need to be.”

The foundational components to measure actions had been already in place when he was employed in October, however the Blue Jays “didn’t have it in a concise report that we could use right away,” he says. Now, they’re producing motion stories monitoring “certain markers that we think are important in the swing, checking things and making sure the movements are staying on the right path and if things are changing without us seeing it with our eyes.”

They’re not completed growing, both, with Popkins saying the tempo at which the bio-mech workers has made progress “is going to get us to a really good point in the future.”

Equally vital, in fact, is how that info is introduced to gamers, and on that entrance, Popkins is assembly gamers the place they’re at. If they need biomechanical scans, swing trails and reams of knowledge, no sweat. Or if they need extra conventional video, all good, too.

“We’ll ask them what they have and what their thoughts are and how we can guide them back to where they need to be — it’s not always us leading, sometimes it’s us collaborating,” says Popkins. “Daulton was more video, talking it through with him, and connecting his feels to the video is what’s really important for him. That’s how he learns. That’s how he likes to be taught.”

What additionally helped Varsho lock in a few of these feels was the restrictions on what he might do due to his shoulder rehab.

He solely obtained clearance to begin taking half-swings in January, forcing him to decelerate and construct some muscle reminiscence along with his bat vertical and arms above the baseball, which “helped me understand, OK, that’s all I need to do in the game.”

“I didn’t have the strength to just take a full-on swing,” he continues. “So I used to be like, how can I am going A-to-B, be brief and direct and sq. up the baseball? I slowed myself down and slowed my mind down to have the ability to try this. That is gotten me again to who I used to be after I was a younger child, going A-to-B attempting to sq. up the baseball. You are not attempting to take an enormous swing and hit a homer. It is helped me be extra simplified. …

“If I’m able to do that, I’m able to cover a lot more pitches,” he provides, “because the minute that you get longer is the minute that my barrel loops underneath and I don’t have a lot of success.”

Proper now, Varsho is having a number of success, making important contributions to a lineup that’s wanted them, leveraging the instruments of the hitting division working to make up misplaced floor, as nicely.