{"id":24542,"date":"2025-07-26T03:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T03:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/24542\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T03:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T03:02:08","slug":"with-his-spot-secure-bargers-big-bat-keeps-producing-for-mlb-leading-blue-jays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/24542\/","title":{"rendered":"With his spot secure, Barger’s big bat keeps producing for MLB-leading Blue Jays"},"content":{"rendered":"

DETROIT \u2014 In 2024, when he was up and down between triple-A and the majors, or even earlier this year, when he was the last cut of spring training and wasn\u2019t called up until three weeks into the season, Addison Barger<\/a> wouldn\u2019t have handled games like Thursday\u2019s well.<\/p>\n

First time up, got his barrel to the screws of a Reese Olson changeup, lined it 111 m.p.h. directly into Gleyber Torres\u2019s webbing. Next plate appearance, saw only his third fastball of the night, hammered it at 106 m.p.h. to right field where it nearly knocked Wenceel Perez over as he watched it into his glove. Third trip, didn\u2019t even get a chance when the Tigers intentionally walked him.<\/p>\n

As a younger player, that kind of game would\u2019ve made Barger anxious.\u00a0If I don\u2019t start getting some of these balls to fall, am I going to keep seeing playing time? Am I going to get to stay here at all?<\/p>\n

The difference now is having those thoughts \u2014\u00a0which weren\u2019t irrational at the time \u2014 would be preposterous. Barger isn\u2019t going anywhere. He isn\u2019t even being pinch-hit for against left-handers, like in Thursday\u2019s seventh inning when Blue Jays manager John Schneider left him in to face Dietrich Enns, an over-the-top southpaw who spent the last three seasons in Asia. Not exactly an easy dude to gameplan for.<\/p>\n

But Barger had one, sitting cutter out of the shoot and staying on it even as Enns got ahead, 0-2, with a pair of fastballs. That\u2019s when Barger spat on a tough, strike-to-ball curveball before finally getting his pitch and putting his swing on it, reaching out and hammering a cutter away into the right-centre field gap for a two-run triple.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s approaches like those, within at-bats like those, on nights like those, that are allowing Barger to thrive within a reciprocal cycle of growth, success, and confidence that\u2019s sustaining his breakout campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s nights like Friday \u2014 when Barger shot a full-count double to the left-centre field wall in the fourth to tie a game and spark a rally the Blue Jays rode to a 6-2 victory over the Detroit Tigers<\/a>, \u2014that offer a ringing reinforcement of what a catalyst Barger can be for MLB\u2019s most productive offence since May 8.<\/p>\n

Over that span, the Blue Jays have gone 46-22 \u2014 a best-in-baseball .672 winning percentage \u2014\u00a0while leading MLB in batting average, on-base percentage, OPS, and sheer runs per game. It\u2019s a stunning wave the Blue Jays have ridden to MLB\u2019s winningest record at 62-42, a half-game ahead of the 61-42 Brewers. It\u2019s the latest point in a season at which the Blue Jays have held MLB\u2019s best record since Aug. 2, 1992.<\/p>\n

Barger\u2019s game-flipping swing came with one out, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on third, and Detroit up one. Tigers starter Keider Montero was doing what everyone does against Barger these days, throwing anything but his fastball and nibbling around the edges of the zone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Barger took a good, long look at a 2-2 curveball that started belt-high and plunged beneath his knees, demonstrating the kind of measured take you wouldn\u2019t have seen from him years ago. And then the payoff pitch, a slider, made quite a crack off his bat:<\/p>\n

Barger crossed with the go-ahead run later in the inning as Javier Baez let Joey Loperfido reach on a throwing error. And from there, five of the next six Blue Jays came up with hits against Montero, punctuated by a loud Bo Bichette double in the fifth that plated two and chased the Tigers starter from the game.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the top eight hitters in Toronto\u2019s lineup all finished the night with hits, four of them with two or more; George Springer ripped a trio of balls at 107 m.p.h. or harder; Guerrero doubled twice off smooth swings; and of the 13 balls put in play at 100 m.p.h. or harder throughout the game, 10 came off Blue Jays bats.<\/p>\n

Jose Berrios was entirely fine, working six innings of two-run ball, striking out six while walking two, yet relegated to an afterthought shadowed by Toronto\u2019s towering offence. The Blue Jays now have double-digit hits in four straight games, and six of eight since the all-star break. Since that May 8 cut-off, 13 players have taken at least 60 plate appearances for the Blue Jays \u2014\u00a011 of them boast a wRC+ of the league-average 100 or higher.<\/p>\n

Of course, every good team needs an unheralded contributor who unexpectedly elevates himself. You remember the exhilarating 2015 Blue Jays for Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion, and Jose Bautista combining to hit an absurd 120 home runs with 348 RBIs. But the fourth-most productive hitter on that team, Chris Colabello, played an integral role in its success with a 143 wRC+ and 1.77 WPA that trailed only the aforementioned three-headed monster.<\/p>\n

A year later, as Encarnacion and Donaldson once again led the way (Bautista\u2019s season was marred by injury), it was Michael Saunders helping raise Toronto\u2019s offensive ceiling with an all-star campaign, homering 24 times and OPS\u2019ing .816 as the Blue Jays returned to the ALCS.<\/p>\n

This year it\u2019s Barger, who entered Friday\u2019s play third on the team in wOBA (.356), OPS (.842), and wRC+ (129). For anyone uninitiated with modern catch-all offensive statistics, those numbers are really good. They tell us Barger\u2019s been his team\u2019s third-best hitter \u2014\u00a0following Springer and Guerrero \u2014 in a way traditional counting stats can\u2019t because Barger spent the first three weeks of the season in the minors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The way the league\u2019s adjusted to his approach tells us how well Barger\u2019s been hitting, too. From his mid-April call-up through the end of May, Barger was getting challenged with a first-pitch fastball over half the time. But now that he\u2019s demonstrated what he can do to those pitches, slugging .503 with a 51-per-cent hard-hit rate against heaters, that first-pitch fastball rate has declined precipitously, all the way down to only 43 per cent this month.<\/p>\n

Fastballs in general have been tough to come by, as Barger\u2019s seeing one less than half the time over his last 40 games. There\u2019s no such thing as a fastball count anymore for him. Through the end of May, when Barger was ahead in the count, he saw fastballs 58 per cent of the time. But since the calendar flipped to June, that rate\u2019s dropped 10 points.<\/p>\n

Yet, all Barger can do is follow the patterns and adjust back. Like Thursday, when Olson started him changeup-curveball in his first plate appearance and threw him another changeup in a 2-1 count. Barger likes hitting changeups and was looking for one in that spot \u2014 that\u2019s why it came off his bat at 111 m.p.h.<\/p>\n

Similar approach his next time out, when Olson stayed away from his fastball again, starting Barger with a sweeper and throwing a 1-1 curveball, a pitch he\u2019d used less than five per cent of the time in that count this season. But Barger didn\u2019t bite, and when Olson finally gave in and threw a sinker, he laced it at 106 m.p.h.<\/p>\n

That those two balls seemingly caught a gravitational pull into gloves doesn\u2019t matter. Barger did his job. And now that he\u2019s less worried about losing that job, he can live with the outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s baseball. My job is to hit the ball hard. If I do it, I\u2019ve accomplished my goal,\u201d he says. \u201cThere aren\u2019t that many times in the game where I\u2019m on the fastball. So, it\u2019s fine if they don\u2019t want to throw them to me. I\u2019ll take a chance every now and then. But rarely am I even on the heater. So, it\u2019s fine. I understand that it\u2019s not a pitch I\u2019m going to get a lot of.\u201d<\/p>\n

This April, when Barger was called up and hit .171 through his first 16 games while making outs on 10 balls he hit 95 m.p.h. or harder and running a .335 xBA, he wasn\u2019t quite so zen about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it frustrated him,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t now. It’s so cool to see him come into the dugout \u2014 and this goes for a lot of guys \u2014\u00a0not really talking results. They’re talking about what they were thinking in the box in real time and trying to make adjustments. It’s way different now than it was earlier in the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

That goes for the matchups and situations Schneider trusts Barger in, as well. He left him in to face another lefty on Friday, reliever Brant Hurter, and Barger nearly came through again, lacing a ball up the middle at 96 m.p.h. But Baez was positioned practically behind second base and needed only one-and-a-half steps to his left to corral it.<\/p>\n

There was a time, not so long ago, when that result would\u2019ve driven Barger nuts. But not anymore. And he has his own growth, success, and confidence to thank for that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no worries about not playing or getting sent down. That\u2019s completely gone. I can just try to hit the ball hard and help the team win,\u201d Barger said. \u201cAnd I know that if I keep hitting the ball hard, they\u2019re going to drop in eventually. But mindset-wise, when you\u2019re having a better year, it definitely helps. There\u2019s some truth to that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2014 In 2024, when he was up and down between triple-A and the majors, or even earlier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-24542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}