SIMMONS: Bam Bam Barger may be the real deal for Blue Jays
Addison Barger has punched his way into the starting lineup, with hard-swinging power and a versatility in the field.
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Growing up, there were two dogs in the Barger household. One named Bam Bam and the other named Pebbles.
“Were you a Flintstones guy?” Addison Barger was asked the other day, the dog names clearly coming from the legendary television cartoon.
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“Not me,” he said. “I guess my parents were Flintstones people.”
It all seems kind of funny right now that the kid born in Washington State and grew up in Florida has been tabbed ‘Bam Bam’ by Jamie Campbell and others on the Sportsnet Blue Jays’ television crew.
Bam Bam Barger. It has a certain ring to it. Like Bam Bam Bigelow or Bam Bam Meulens.
He doesn’t mind the name, really, if that’s what it is, so long as he can live up to the billing.
It feels good that they’re calling him anything at all these days, as the bevy of Blue Jays youngsters continue to fight for playing time, attention and, maybe in this case, full-time work.
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The list of hopefuls has been long. The number of successes few. The real hope begins and ends right now with Bam Bam Barger.
Barger has hit four home runs in the past four Blue Jays games. He has played both third base and right field in that time. He has unlikely natural power and a Jesse Barfield type of arm. He has some gifts from his stocky 5-foot-11, 225-pound frame.
It’s always too early to make this kind of claim for any kid on the way up, but this one looks like real.
Even when striking out, Barger looks big league with a swing and a miss.
The lineup of Blue Jays possibilities has been long and rather unproductive in recent seasons. The door has been open for Davis Schneider and Will Wagner and Joey Loperfido and Alan Roden and Nathan Lukes and Myles Straw and Jonatan Clase and Michael Stefanic. The opportunity has been there for a bunch of them.
Barger has punched his way into the starting lineup, with hard-swinging power and a versatility that takes him from third base to the outfield with the hardest thing of all for any big leaguer on the rise: An inner confidence that belies his accomplishments to date.
COVID-19 changed a lot of our lives in a lot of different ways and the pandemic changed Barger’s baseball path. He lost a minor-league season in 2020, as did so many of his cohorts. That was supposed to hurt budding prospects, not help.
Most of us spent our COVID time binging the latest that Netflix had to offer. Not Barger. He decided to put the time to work, to invest in whatever he thought was going to be his career. Three things became part of his professional day.
One, he started lifting more weights than ever before, lifting obsessively and, over time, became exponentially stronger. Barger did not inherit the kind of body he current owns. He was a tiny guy growing up. He was all of 160 pounds when the Blue Jays drafted him.
He wanted more weight and more strength, so weightlifting became his daily mantra. That, and eating more and eating right and gaining muscle.
“I never ate so much in my life,” he said of his second big adaptation.
The third thing — changing his swing. He could hit the ball before, but his swing was not memorable or violent. He wanted to swing harder than he had ever swung before.
He did that after batting practice pitch during COVID, developing the swing he now shows on a nightly basis with the Jays.
Now he weighs more than 220 and he swings harder than just about anyone in baseball, and that combination of new size, new strength, new body, new approach, turned him from marginal prospect to every-day big leaguer.
Which is what he has become now with the forever-struggling Blue Jays.
Barger’s month of May was something to behold. He hit four home runs, knocked in 12 runs, batted in.292 with an OPS of .887.
The $500-million man, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., hit five home runs in May, knocked in 12 runs, batted .291 with an OPS of .869.
“I feel good,” said Barger, talking about the best month of his brief big-league career. “You get a lot of confidence knowing you’re going to be in there every day and get a chance to produce. That’s all anybody wants really, a fair chance.
“You do your thing, you hopefully get better at it and you keep working. I never had the mindset of thinking I was close (to be being here) or not. That was never the way I approached it.
“I always wanted to play everyday, whether than was in double A, triple A, or now. I was worried about myself and about that day. I feel like I’m capable, but now it’s about showing it. I know if I relax and play my game, I’ll be in there.”
How do you know when a callup is real? Barger didn’t make the Jays opening day lineup this season. Wagner did. How do you know when a hot streak like this one is a sign of things to come?
Manager John Schneider says its takes about 200 at bats before you have any real sense of what you have in a big-league player. But after 208 at-bats last season, Barger was shuffled to the side by the Jays.
“You never really know until they do it,” veteran pitcher Kevin Gausman said.
This is Gausman’s fifth team and 13th Major League season. He has seen so many prospects come and go — more go than come over the years.
“With Addison, the biggest difference I’ve seen is plate discipline,” Gausman said. “The hardest thing to do in all of sports is hit a baseball. But what I see now is he’s not chasing nearly as many pitches as he was. He’s fouling off really good pitches. He’s capitalizes on mistakes. That’s what the best hitters do.”
Gausman is watching. Schneider is watching, Just about everyone in and around the Blue Jays are watching. And his dad, Adam, is watching ever so closely.
Like a lot of fathers, Adam coached his son at baseball. They had a diamond made in their large backyard. They talked baseball and lived baseball about as regularly as any father and son could or would talk baseball.
Even now, his dad often travels to Jays games, he’s in Toronto now for the series with the Phillies. They talk or text just about every day, sometimes several times a day. Who knew that the family dog they had named Bam Bam would wind up a possible nickname for his rather smallish son?
Bam Bam Barger. The latest Blue Jays hope. Legitimate hope.
It’s early June and he’s only 25 and, who knows, this self-made kid from COVID may well be the real deal.
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