'Just hit it hard': Blue Jays break out with big-blow offence in win over Braves

TORONTO — John Schneider’s message to Addison Barger upon his arrival from triple-A Buffalo to cover Nathan Lukes’ paternity leave?

“Hit a homer,” the Toronto Blue Jays manager said with a hearty laugh, before turning serious. “Be ready to play right, third. You don't know how long it could be, really. For the next few days, he's here and we'll see what it is whenever Nate gets back.”

Barger started in right field and didn’t go deep Tuesday night, but fellow rookie Alan Roden and veteran Anthony Santander both did, giving the Blue Jays their first multi-homer game of the young season. Santander’s drive, after Bo Bichette doubled and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. walked following Roden’s go-ahead, two-run shot, was also the club’s first three-run drive of 2025, a pivotal swing off Spencer Schwellenbach in a 6-3 victory. 

For a team that’s largely scratched and clawed to score through the first 2½ weeks of the season, it was the type of big-blow offence the Blue Jays have been waiting for.

“We know that power is going to come at some point, right,” said Santander, who has homers in two of his last three games. “Personally, I've been feeling good the last four games, hitting the ball a little harder, and hopefully I can continue that rhythm.”

Up until the fateful fifth, as Kevin Gausman and Schwellenbach duelled before a crowd of 26,979, the Blue Jays looked to be headed for another night of situational scoring. They manufactured a run in the third when Roden led off with a double, cleverly tagged to third on Bichette’s line drive to right field and then got a terrific jump on a Guerrero chopper to third, scoring ahead of a strong Austin Riley throw home. 

The capability to produce runs in that fashion against starters of Schwellenbach’s calibre is important to Blue Jays hitting coach David Popkins, because “when it comes to facing an ace, if you don't run into a ball, you're in hard to score runs,” he said. 

“Home runs do play,” he added, “but it just makes you a little harder to pitch to when you're a team that's a little more complete.”

To that end, what Popkins has been preaching, and the Blue Jays are working toward, is “trying to find a sweet spot” between a team that can bang, like they were in 2021-22, and a team that ekes out offence, the way they were in 2023-24.

“If we were fighters, we're winning decisions, we're really good at jabbing and keeping the guys on the outside right now,” Popkins said. “We're trying to find a little bit of that knockout power to make sure teams respect that, too. Every team strives for that. The teams that have the power want more contact with balls in play and more situational execution. And the teams that have that want more power. So you're always trying to find that blend. I like the blend that we have now. As time goes on, as the weather warms up, as our guys get more at-bats, the power is going to come.”

The search for that blend, of course, hasn’t been easy for the Blue Jays over the past four years, when they went from the instant-offence mash of 2021 to the drought of 2024. Over that span, the overall offensive environment in the majors has evolved, with fluctuations in the yearly homer count as pitching velocity keeps rising, and personnel changes have led to a lineup with fewer pure power threats.

As a result, their home-run totals have declined steadily since they hit a club-record 262 in 2021, leading to the hiring of Popkins and changes to the club’s “messaging, when we think about how many days, months and years we talked about swing decisions and swinging at the right pitch,” said Schneider.

“If you're (focused on swing decisions), you're probably sacrificing some power, and if you're OK with some swing and miss, you're hopefully getting more of it, so it depends on the team,” Schneider continued. “Pitching is different from 2021 to now. There are mistakes, but it seems like the stuff is just that much better, so it's a little bit harder to clip those mistakes. I don't really know how to pinpoint it, but I think there's a variety of things, mostly, probably just approach-driven by us.”

To that end, the way the Blue Jays are evaluating their swing decisions is different, with a subtle shift from whether hitters swing at strikes to whether they’re swinging at pitches they can hit hard.

The past couple of seasons, “we probably overcooked it a little bit,” Schneider conceded. “Now it's get something you can drive, which is just paying attention to the quality of the contact, as opposed to the actual swing decision, if that makes sense.”

It does to George Springer, who was taught at a young age by his father that “you want to hit strikes, but not all strikes are good pitches to hit.” 

The way the Blue Jays are talking about hitting this season “has probably shifted from trying to get the perfect pitch to hit to just, hey, if you get something that you think you can hit, make sure you get your best swing off,” said Springer. “I think it gives guys more of a mental freedom to just go up there and not worry about trying to get the perfect pitch to hit. There are a lot of guys across the league that can hit balls out of the strike zone hard and far. Why would you want to take that away from somebody? I played with Jose Altuve, who can hit anything he swings at. … For us as a team, you just want to hit to your strengths. And whether that's in the zone, a fraction of the plate off the zone, in, out, up, I don't think it matters — just hit it hard.”

That mindset and the small sample size of results it’s produced so far helped quell internal concerns about the early lack of homers. The Blue Jays entered Tuesday’s play with a wRC+ of 108, which ranked 11^th in the majors. They were seventh in the majors with a .335 OBP, helping to create the fourth most at-bats with runners in scoring position at 173.

Their .266 average with runners in scoring position was ninth, with their slug of .312 in such situations the outlier ranking at 26^th. So rather than chasing power, they are trusting it will arrive.

“We're top-10 (in wRC+), and our home-run hitters haven't started to hit home runs,” said Popkins. “For me, that shows if our guys are eventually going to regress toward the mean, they're eventually going to hit home runs. That shows that we're being able to be productive when we're not on fire. If you have an offence that's able to be productive when it's not hot, that's an offence that can actually last and withstand and win playoff games even when they're not firing on all cylinders.”

That’s a point echoed by Santander.

“That's what really good teams do: not only wait for the big blast, but take the walks, take the base hits, doubles, putting the ball in play, especially with two strikes and runners in scoring position,” he said. “The power is going to come, but it's always good to use all the ways to score runs.”

One good night against Spencer Schwellenbach doesn’t mean the Blue Jays are suddenly firing on all cylinders. But maybe it’s a sign the engine’s starting to get going.