Article: Squaring up for Success: How Daulton Varsho Can Become a More Well-Rounded Player

[Jesse Burrill]

No one lifts the ball more than Daulton Varsho. No one squares it up less. The path to success may lie in the middle.

The Toronto Blue Jays have mentioned on several occasions that “internal improvement” will go a long way to improve the 74-game win total they had in 2024. That statement is true for all 30 teams in baseball, and the Blue Jays are no exception. In fact, they had several players who underperformed their expectations. George Springer, Davis Schneider, Alejandro Kirk, Ernie Clement, Daulton Varsho, and Bo Bichette all made at least 300 plate appearances wile running a wRC+ below 100. If you include the 83 wRC+ that Andrés Giménez put up in Cleveland, that makes seven players; only the Chicago White Sox had more. That's not where you want to be, and it's simply not good enough for a team that says it has playoff aspirations. The good news is all seven of the aforementioned players are projected to be much better than they were last year, according to Steamer. Even if that doesn't come to pass, getting above-average production from at least five of those seven players will go a long way toward helping this team score more runs and ultimately compete for a Wild Card spot.

Varsho might be the most interesting of the bunch. His elite defence has made him one of the best outfielders in baseball. In fact, his 9.7 fWAR over the past three seasons ranks 14th among all outfielders, ahead of players like Christian Yelich, Teoscar Hernández, and Seiya Suzuki. It's pretty good company to be in. Varsho's bat has held him back. Despite hitting 38 home runs over the past two seasons, he has a combined 92 wRC+, making him 8% worse than the average hitter. These numbers are fine, but they pale in comparison to the 27 HRs and 106 wRC+ he put up in his final season in Arizona.

So what happened over the last few seasons? Is there hope that Varsho can take his offensive game to another level in 2025? To answer those questions, let's look back into the 2022 season and see what he did well. The first number that pops up is his 10.2% barrel rate, which was roughly three percentage points higher that year than any other year in his career. Barrels are the designation given to balls hit at an ideal combination of exit velocity and launch angle. In 2024, the typical barrel produced a .719 Batting Average and a 2.402 slugging percentage. Varsho's barrel rate dropped to 7.3% in 2023 and to 6.2% in 2024, which put him in the 31st percentile in baseball. Let's start with his batted ball profile:

Varsho has seen his flyball and popup rate increase dramatically over the last few seasons, while his line drive rate, normally a fairly volatile stat, has bounced up and down. Overall, the combination of fly balls and line drives (the balls that can end up as barrels) has stayed roughly the same, but it's clear that, like so many players in today's game, he's trying to get the ball in the air more. However, Varsho's popup rate is very concerning. In 2024, it was 18.2%, the highest of his career and the highest of any qualified player by a huge margin. Moreover, when Varsho does hit a fly ball or a line drive, he's not hitting the ball as hard as he used to. In 2021 and 2022, when Varshio hit one of those air balls, he had a 93.8-mph exit velocity and 55.8% hard-hit rate. Since he joined the Blue Jays, those numbers are 91.9 mph and 47.3%. Varsho may be getting carried away with trying to lift the ball.

Could a simple mechanical adjustment be the key to getting Varsho to square up the baseball more? Maybe! Thanks to Statcast's new bat tracking information, we know that he has solid bat speed. The problem is in his squared-up rate:

On a per-swing basis, Varsho squares the ball up less than nearly every player in baseball. If you look at how often he squares it up when he makes contact, he's dead last. There's a pretty clear connection here. Esteban Rivera has written about Varsho's attack angle over at FanGraphs. Varsho has turned himself into a master of lifting the ball; his 24.4-degree launch angle was the highest among all qualified players in 2024. However, the extremely steep bat angle necessary to hit virtually everything in the air also means that Varsho's bat doesn't spend much time on plane with the ball. He's not making much contact, and he's among the worst players in the league at making solid contact. In order to succeed at the plate, Varsho will likely need to strike a better balance in his attack angle.

That may be a big ask; hitting a round ball with a round bat is one of the hardest things to do in sports. New hitting coach David Popkins is coming from the Twins, who have for years been deeply committed to pulling the ball in the air, the exact thing that Varsho's swing is designed to accomplish. If Popkins can help Varsho strike that balance, barreling up the baseball just a little bit more, his offensive numbers could combine with his elite defence and above-average base running, to make the complete player we've been hoping for since Varsho's arrival in 2023. The Blue Jays don't even need Varsho to become elite at squaring up the ball. If he can just improve from worst in baseball to somewhere in the middle of the pack, then we should see both the batting average and the power numbers take a step forward this season. For a team expecting internal improvements, the star center fielder is a good place to start.

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[BB17]

It’s going to be really hard for him to make any adjustments given he’s coming off a major shoulder surgery and by all accounts likely won’t even be ready for opening day.

It’s tough to make an adjustment that you can stick to in one offseason let alone trying to do that in season. Even last year he came into the year with slightly different swing only to have the bad habits come back and revert to what he was.

I hope I’m wrong but I don’t see him having a good year at the plate.

[Orgfiller]

I think the question here when it relates to Varsho is if he has the ability to change his swing enough to square up the ball more. Like basically, does he have the hand-eye coordination to get it done. He's not an egregious chaser, 67th percentile last season although it's been below the 50th percentile for most of his career, which also saw an uptick in his walk rate. But I guess that in itself was an adjustment, take a few more pitches at the expense of quality of contact.

He makes contact often enough, 76% for his career which is not bad, higher than guys like Bryce Harper, Matt Chapman, Rafael Devers to list a few. He honestly could stand to swing a bit less and work on being selective with his swing decisions. His biggest issue nonetheless is the totally exploited pitches up in the zone, he gets killed by those, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was a big reason why his IFFB is brutal, he's either whiffing up there or softly popping it up. He either needs to work on outright not swinging at those pitches, or change his swing to not be exploited by it. Can he do this? Does he have the talent to adjust in this way? That's the biggest question.

[Laika]

1 hour ago, Orgfiller said:

I think the question here when it relates to Varsho is if he has the ability to change his swing enough to square up the ball more. Like basically, does he have the hand-eye coordination to get it done. He's not an egregious chaser, 67th percentile last season although it's been below the 50th percentile for most of his career, which also saw an uptick in his walk rate. But I guess that in itself was an adjustment, take a few more pitches at the expense of quality of contact.

He makes contact often enough, 76% for his career which is not bad, higher than guys like Bryce Harper, Matt Chapman, Rafael Devers to list a few. He honestly could stand to swing a bit less and work on being selective with his swing decisions. His biggest issue nonetheless is the totally exploited pitches up in the zone, he gets killed by those, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was a big reason why his IFFB is brutal, he's either whiffing up there or softly popping it up. He either needs to work on outright not swinging at those pitches, or change his swing to not be exploited by it. Can he do this? Does he have the talent to adjust in this way? That's the biggest question.

It is hard to imagine that there is anything else there at this point. It does not seem like he has the physical hitting tools to be better on offense. 

He might be able to squeeze a few more wOBA points out of his skillset with minor changes... maybe. But hitting just looks "hard" for him all the time. A lot of his walks come from being passive and getting lucky, for example, and not really from having a good eye (IMO). 

A lot of people are mad he isn't as good or better than he was in Arizona but with his swiss cheese swing and mediocre eye, I wonder if we should just be happy that he's a league average (ish) hitter still? 

[Orgfiller]

5 minutes ago, Laika said:

It is hard to imagine that there is anything else there at this point. It does not seem like he has the physical hitting tools to be better on offense. 

He might be able to squeeze a few more wOBA points out of his skillset with minor changes... maybe. But hitting just looks "hard" for him all the time. A lot of his walks come from being passive and getting lucky, for example, and not really from having a good eye (IMO). 

A lot of people are mad he isn't as good or better than he was in Arizona but with his swiss cheese swing and mediocre eye, I wonder if we should just be happy that he's a league average (ish) hitter still? 

I agree. Honestly the league hitter ish part might be what we need to hope for at this point. The expected metrics think he's horrendous, but he does have the raw power to just kind of luck into league average production, and he's a good enough runner who "hustles" to earn a few XBH here and there. I doubt he can even crack a .275 BABIP again on pure talent alone.

[BB17]

Looking at his numbers he never was all that good offensively. Sure he had 27 HR in 22 but he had a .298 xWOBA. 2021 was his best year at .323 xwOBA and it was 315 PA.

I'm surprised he's projected to be above leave average honestly. I guess pulling balls in the air you could outperform the batted ball data.

[Laika]

13 minutes ago, BB17 said:

Looking at his numbers he never was all that good offensively. Sure he had 27 HR in 22 but he had a .298 xWOBA. 2021 was his best year at .323 xwOBA and it was 315 PA.

I'm surprised he's projected to be above leave average honestly. I guess pulling balls in the air you could outperform the batted ball data.

And the projection systems seem to all agree. 

STEAMER - .307 wOBA 
ZiPS - .309 wOBA
OOPSY - .312 wOBA

I think coming into his age 28 season all of these would still be projecting some positive growth but from 2026 on the opposite will be true. 

Pulled flyballs are kind of the best thing you can do if you have any power whatsoever. 

OOPSY is some new system that uses bat speed and other fancy new s***. For all of Varsho's flaws, he does have bat speed. #3 on the team behind Vlad and Barger. It does help him make contact sometimes even when he is fooled (which is why his plate discipline stats are a bit better than he "looks" as a hitter) and of course it helps him murder a baseball once a week. 

[BB17]

Hmm interesting to hear about this new system. I feel like bat path would be more predictive to success than bat speed. Obviously they work in tandem but in Varsho's case if his bat path was better he wouldn't pop up so much/swing underneath elevated fastballs.

Varsho is kind of similar to Schneider in terms of pulled flyballs but I feel Schneider knows his limitations and wouldn't even swing at certain pitches even if they were strikes because he knew he couldn't hit them.

Thing is the league adjusts so as soon as you show any weakness everyone is going to try to exploit it.

[Brownie19]

He tried to make adjustments last year to get on plane better and reduce the IFF's.  Perhaps helped a little.

He probably needs to spend a full offseason in a lab, reconstructing his swing ala Justin Turner.  People do it every year (like Rooker).  Offseason shoulder surgery would have prevented that this year, so I don't expect much improvement.

[BB17]

58 minutes ago, Brownie19 said:

He tried to make adjustments last year to get on plane better and reduce the IFF's.  Perhaps helped a little.

He probably needs to spend a full offseason in a lab, reconstructing his swing ala Justin Turner.  People do it every year (like Rooker).  Offseason shoulder surgery would have prevented that this year, so I don't expect much improvement.

I agree. I think it probably takes more than on offseason for a lot of players too. The good ones are able to make adjustments and continue to progress where as a lot will revert back to who they were before when high stress is involved.

I'm a believer for young players/prospects they should just go to the Dunedin complex and get into those labs without even seeing game action before they master it. 

 

[Omar]

22 hours ago, Laika said:

although

 

22 hours ago, Laika said:

It is hard to imagine that there is anything else there at this point. It does not seem like he has the physical hitting tools to be better on offense. 

He might be able to squeeze a few more wOBA points out of his skillset with minor changes... maybe. But hitting just looks "hard" for him all the time. A lot of his walks come from being passive and getting lucky, for example, and not really from having a good eye (IMO). 

A lot of people are mad he isn't as good or better than he was in Arizona but with his swiss cheese swing and mediocre eye, I wonder if we should just be happy that he's a league average (ish) hitter still? 

Even so, with his swing profile it is not unreasonable to expect 25 hr per season is it?