Can slick-fielding Blue Jays outfielder Daulton Varsho be a force with his bat as well?
'I think Varsho is still like an untapped resource offensively. And I think he's starting to get there.'
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Daulton Varsho knows that his big-league bonafides come from scaling walls and making insane catches to deny opposing hitters of home runs and extra-base hits.
His three Gold Glove awards are testimony to this truth, as are highlights of the more preposterous of those snags that often seem to be played on a loop.
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Can slick-fielding Blue Jays outfielder Daulton Varsho be a force with his bat as well? Back to video
But if you really want to get the Blue Jays centre fielder excited, have him talk about the most intriguing upside of his game: His powerful bat.
“It’s awesome to be able to contribute (on offence),” said Varsho, who has been doing just that since his delayed start to the 2025 season arrived. “Obviously, it’s helping me become the complete player I want to be and I’m showing right now that it’s possible. I’ve just got to do everything I can to keep it going.”
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Varsho’s long-awaited return from shoulder surgery, including an injury list stint that saw him miss the first 28 games of the season, came with a bonus for a team starved for offence on too many nights.
His renowned defence has been boosted by seven home runs — most on the Blue Jays — in only 16 games. The seventh was a grand slam in the Blue Jays’ 14-0 win over the San Diego Padres on Wednesday.
The early surge also has seen Varsho leap to the three-hole in John Schneider’s batting order as the manager is determinedly committed to riding whatever hot hand he can find.
It’s the kind of start Varsho hoped for — and frankly, the Jays were in near desperate need of — after a long and painful winter.
It’s also a renewal of the offensive potential the 28-year-old flashed in 2022 when he hit a career-high 27 homers for the Arizona Diamondbacks. That output that no doubt was part of the attraction for the Jays in the trade that sent Gabriel Moreno and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to the desert, a potential complement to his elite defence.
The power has always been in there, apparently. It just needs to be unlocked more consistently — and permanently.
“Guys figure out things at different times,” Schneider said recently. “Not comparing him to (former Jays great) Jose Bautista, but that’s the one that jumps out. You figure something out mechanically and it gives you a better shot every single time.
“I think Varsh is still like an untapped resource offensively. And I think he’s starting to get there.”
The challenge now, then, will be to keep him there.
Varsho has been in the big leagues long enough to understand how fleeting confidence can be and the perils that come when it abandons a hitter. He certainly went through a gruesome dry spell last summer, a stretch in which he hit just one homer in a 47-game run from May 26 to July 29, which included a drought of 29 straight games.
“You could have no confidence and a great swing and it would get you nowhere,” Varsho said. “So yeah, being confident up there, knowing that my approach is good, getting the pitches I want to hit and just not missing them seems to be working for me.”
Where Varsho believes this season will be different than other uneven stretches of his career is that the swing changes he has made are designed to keep things more consistent. He has his hands set in a consistent position and has grooved that feeling into his comfort zone. The hope, then, is that when an inevitable lull comes, he doesn’t drift off reaching for an answer.
“I think that’s every baseball player,” Varsho said. “You’re always tinkering, you’re always trying to find the right swing. But I think overall, everything’s just kind of put in a spot for me to be successful.
“I’m not trying to search for things anymore. It comes from an approach, plan and perspective instead of making swing adjustments.”
The grind of recovering from surgery on his right shoulder was excruciatingly tedious for Varsho, whose throwing strength still isn’t all the way back. The blessing, however, was that during that down time, he was still able to swing a bat.
That’s where new Jays hitting coach David Popkins got involved. He had analyzed Varsho’s swing not just from 2024, but throughout the career. Popkins identified what worked when the bat was popping and what was wrong when Varsho struggled. And then the two went to work, first with video and then in the batting cage.
“It was a lot,” Varsho said. “Going through the whole surgery process … anybody who’s gone through it knows it’s very demanding. So slowing myself down, understanding my swing mechanics helped me out a lot.
“Just starting with half swings and being able to work my way to full swings.”
As comfortable as he is with his new set-up, there is still work to be done. Varsho knows he needs to strike out less and hit more as his .217 batting average attests.
Nothing like flashing some power to help fuel confidence, however.
“I would say there’s a lot of points where you have confidence for a couple weeks, then it falls off and you’re just trying to get it back,” Varsho said. “There’s been multiple times through my career where this has happened.
“Obviously this start has been really good for me.”
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