There’s never been much doubt that Addison Barger can make impressive things happen when he puts the bat on the ball.
Barger possesses bat speed that’s almost three m.p.h. above MLB average and his hardest hit on record (113.7 m.p.h. at triple-A in 2023) would rank 48th among 261 qualified hitters in the majors this season, sitting 0.1 m.p.h. below Bryce Harper.
His xwOBA on contact in his brief MLB career (.399) is 30 points above league average, behind only Vladimir Guerrero Jr. among Toronto Blue Jays this year.
But the 24-year-old is slashing just .211/.247/.410 in his rookie season — good for an 82 wRC+ — so it’s clear that the fact he hits the ball hard isn’t enough to guarantee success. A beefy 26.3 strikeout percentage and minuscule 4.1 walk percentage have a lot to do with that.
Yet in recent weeks we’ve started to see a different Barger. Instead of letting wild swinging get in the way of his power potential, the rookie is getting his approach under control and letting his thump shine through.
Before suffering a minor knee injury on Tuesday, Barger was slashing .333/.372/.692 in his last 11 games, failing to record a hit just once in that time.
It was the sort of stretch too short to prove anything definitive about the strong-armed utility player, but it’s shown growth in his ability to handle big-league pitching. Questionable swing decisions were a driving force of Barger’s struggles in his early battle with MLB hurlers, but his improvement recently has jumped off the page.
That trend is supported by Barger’s increased restraint on pitches outside the zone while his aggression within it remains consistent — preventing him from getting into an undue amount of deep counts.
Split | O-Zone Swing % | Zone Swing % | Total Swing % |
First 40 Games | 36.4% | 60.9% | 49.7% |
Last 11 Games | 23.6% | 60.2% | 44.7% |
In the first 40 games of Barger’s career, he walked just four times with 40 strikeouts to his name. There isn’t a single qualified hitter in the majors with a BB/K that bad this season. Since Aug. 23, he’s walked three times against just five strikeouts.
That’s a notable date because it included perhaps the biggest moment of Barger’s young career when he walked off the Los Angeles Angels.
At 439 feet it was an impressive home run, but more revealing is how he reached that point. Down 1-2 Barger took a close changeup below the zone …
… then spat on another further down …
… to earn himself a 3-2 count — and a pitch to hit.
While that’s far from superhuman stuff, before that night he’d found himself in a 1-2 count 40 times in his big-league career, with two hits and 24 strikeouts to show for it. He’d never hit a home run with two strikes.
Fighting back for a walk-off home run wasn’t outside of Barger’s capabilities, but he hadn’t demonstrated the ability to do it before. It would be hyperbolic to describe his walk-off as a turning point, but there’s no doubt that since the day he hit it, his two-strike results have been far better:
Split | Whiff + Called Strike % | Ball % | Hits |
First 40 Games | 26.4% | 25.7% | 4 |
Last 11 Games | 9.1% | 38.2% | 6 |
On Tuesday, he showcased that improvement, coming back from an 0-2 hole before swatting a Tyler Phillips changeup over the fence in a more favorable 2-2 count.
Because Barger was so erratic when he first arrived in the majors it’s easy to forget that he demonstrated a strong approach at triple-A this season. His 16.1 per cent walk rate ranked 23rd among 231 International League hitters with at least 200 plate appearances this season. He also posted a strikeout rate under 20 per cent for the first time since he was in Rookie Ball back in 2018.
Although Barger is unlikely to ever post plate discipline numbers like that in the majors, they show that he’s not the out-of-control hitter he initially appeared to be when he first threw on a Blue Jays jersey.
On the other hand, sustaining the approach we’ve seen in recent weeks would also be asking a lot from the 24-year-old, particularly if his knee issue throws him off track at all.
Luckily for Barger and the Blue Jays, there’s plenty of happy medium between striking out 10 times as often as you walk and what he’s done lately.
It’s too early to draw conclusions on where Barger can land on that spectrum. No 11-game span can tell us exactly who he is as a hitter. What his recent work might have shown us is who he’s not, though. We now know that Barger is not incapable of reining his free swinging in, battling in tough counts and producing with two strikes.
Whether he does any of that with consistency is still up in the air, but now there’s some proof of concept. Considering how the ball travels when he does hit it, any sign that he can make contact more often is a promising thing for the Blue Jays.