How will meaningless February baseball translate into meaningful September baseball?
It’s a long way to go for the Blue Jays, who need much to go right and few setbacks by rivals to even have a chance at contending in the stout American League East.
But with the caveat that the calendar is just flipping to March, there are at least some positive signs coming out of Dunedin, both in performance and messaging.
Where past pre seasons have been marked with promises of run prevention and internal improvement, out of urgent necessity the 2025 Blue Jays are all about bounce-back.
With plenty of work still to be done — and more than 25 Grapefruit League games still to be played — here’s the top five signs of hope for the last-place team.
BO IS BACK!
The early observations coming out of Dunedin suggest that the talented Jays shortstop is exactly what we’ve come to know about Bo Bichette since we first met him in 2018.
As driven as any player on the team and as dangerous a hitter as there is when he’s locked in, the Jays need Bichette to rediscover the form he flashed from 2021-23, when he was one of the top performers in the American League.
But as bad as the Jays need it, so does Bichette, who is a year away from free agency and is highly motivated to leave his miserable 2024 season behind. Bichette’s ability to bounce back is central to his team’s aspirations to do the same.
With that in mind, those preliminary reports of a healthy Bichette — particularly his work at the plate — have to be encouraging.
POPKINS AND POWER!
It’s as though somehow when he was hired as the team’s new hitting coach in the wake of last season’s offensive disaster, the Jays didn’t give David Popkins the memo of the company mantra.
And if they did provide him the words to the Run Prevention Rules anthem, Popkins didn’t bother listening.
“I love damage,” Popkins proclaimed to reporters in Dunedin, a definite tone shift from what we’ve heard in recent years. “That’s where I’ve been with the Dodgers and Minnesota (his two previous teams). We did a really good job of hitting the ball out of the yard.”
While those words may have been music to the ears of frustrated Jays fans, Popkins later tempered his comments by clarifying that it won’t be all about power and that Jays hitters need “to become the most creative lineup at scoring runs in baseball.”
Of course, creative could be code for finding another way to produce runs because there aren’t enough impact bats in the lineup, but that veers from the selling of hope that drives the spring narrative.
TIME IS NOW!
You better hope that if you are a team with a 74-88 record and one with a payroll that likely will be the highest in franchise history is approaching camp with a sense of urgency desperation.
Jobs (both on the field and off) and the future of the franchise are on the line, after all, and this is a team that was hard to watch through an indifferent 7-17 final month of 2024.
But, from afar, it certainly seems as though the Jays are approaching their business with an added note of urgency through the first couple of weeks in camp. With a tough schedule out of the gate and a near-desperate need to get off to a tone-setting good start, that attitude shift doesn’t hurt.
ALEJANDRO KIRK
The best way to describe the current prospectus for the Jays lead man behind the plate is that it is a risk-reward situation.
With Danny Jansen dealt at the trade deadline last summer, it was Alejandro Kirk’s destiny that he be “the guy” behind the plate. That means a workload of between 115-120 games, a significant jump up from the 89 games he was behind the dish last season.
Can he handle it?
The good news is that Kirk spent a good portion of his pre-season in Florida rather than his native Mexico and there are indications that an enhanced off-season regimen has paid off.
Catchers — especially of the starting variety — are the busiest players in camp and Kirk will have to balance the mix of catching duties with ramping his offence. His bat, when consistent, can be an important part of a team looking to reboot its ability to score runs.
ORDER, ORDER!
There are still some concerns at the bottom end of the order in the absence of general manager Ross Atkins’ ability to acquire another bat.
But the top end has some potential and perhaps even more notably, manager John Schneider has made it clear that he’s willing to shuffle things at the leadoff spot.
We’ll see how it plays out, but in the early days of camp, we’ve already heard Andres Gimenez, Bichette, Will Wagner and George Springer being named as candidates to hit leadoff.
A couple of points here: If Gimenez can channel some of his hitting/on-base form from 2022, suddenly the top four has a solid dynamic. Get Gimenez and/or Bichette on and then watch Guerrero and Anthony Santander rake.