Spring Training Is About the Signals, Not the Box Score

[Jesse Burrill]

Rejoice, Blue Jays fans, spring training is finally here. It’s a truly wonderful time on the baseball calendar. Every team comes into camp at 0-0, and with that comes optimism that this could be the year that everything clicks. That, at the end of a long 162-game season, you could be the team left celebrating, having outlasted every opponent and achieved World Series glory. An outcome that the Blue Jays almost tasted in 2025.

There is a long time between the first pitch in spring and the last pitch of the World Series, and any baseball team will look significantly different between now and then. The Blue Jays are no exception.

But here’s the tricky part about spring training. Most of what you see doesn't matter. Batting averages, ERAs, and RBIs can all disappear by mid-May, and beyond the small sample size issue, there are structural reasons for that volatility. Hitters are often testing new swings, stances, or approaches at the plate. Pitchers experiment with new grips, pitch mixes, and release points. Early in camp, competition levels can fluctuate. Some days, you're facing a lineup full of MLB regulars; other times, it's minor league players one through nine. Because of this, the box score rarely reflects the real objective, and yet, underneath all that noise, some signals do matter.

Let’s flash back to spring training 2025. The team was coming off an upsetting 74-win season, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had set a date for a contract extension that had come and gone without one, and the team was left with more questions than answers.

Then the games started. The Blue Jays ended up being the best team in the Grapefruit League. Alan Roden was the talk of camp, hitting .407 with four extra-base hits and more walks (6) than strikeouts (4), but by midseason, he had just two barrels and was traded at the deadline. Richard Lovelady and Jacob Barnes were good in the spring and made the team out of the bullpen, but neither player lasted more than three weeks on the roster. George Springer had a 52 wRC+ in spring, but then ended up with his best offensive season ever.

Baseball is a game where small samples can mislead, and in spring training, those small samples get even smaller. So, if a player hits .400 in spring training, is it because of a change they made? Is it because they ran a high BABIP, or because they faced more minor league pitchers, or because of defensive chaos? Whatever the case may be, take every spring stat with a grain of salt.

But that's not to say spring stats don’t matter; you just need to know what to look for. For example, a pitcher's walk and strikeout rates stabilize much more quickly than his ERA. On the hitting side, a stat like isolated power also has some predictive value. Looking at stats like these, it should be easier to predict when a breakout is coming.

Here are three metrics to pay attention to this spring that matter more than basic stats:

• Velocity
• K-BB%
• Swing decisions/quality of contact

Let’s take Daulton Varsho, for example. At the end of the 2024 season, he went through shoulder surgery, and although he wasn’t quite ready for Opening Day, he ended up making some changes to his approach, appeared in some spring games as the designated hitter, and he raked. He ended up with a .455 ISO, and even though his .242 average didn't jump off the page, the power did. 

The power surge in March wasn't a mirage. Not only was his regular season ISO a career high, but he also slugged 20 home runs in 71 games played. He homered once every 12.4 at-bats, a rate that would have ranked sixth in baseball had he qualified. Critically, his spring wasn’t predictive because of the home runs he hit; it was predictive because the underlying batted-ball profile had changed. 

Here's another recent Blue Jays example: 2021 Robbie Ray.

Ray always had excellent stuff. His fastball/slider combination from the left side was great at generating swings and misses; he had a 12.1% career swinging-strike rate entering the 2021 season (per FanGraphs), well above league average. So his issue was never the stuff. It was consistently throwing strikes. After coming into camp and sitting down with Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker, Ray made some changes and improved his strike-throwing and attacked the zone more confidently.

*No Statcast data available for Ray in spring 2018

The changes worked. His zone rate jumped to 50.8% in the 2021 regular season, the highest in any season of his career. The improved command unlocked the full potential of the swing-and-miss stuff he always had, which led to a Cy Young Award.

Now, let’s go back to Springer, who, as mentioned earlier, was dreadful last year in spring training. Were there any signs that the bounceback was coming? The surface stats would say no: He went just 4-for-37 at the plate, with a sub .300 OBP and a dreadful .216 slugging percentage. But Springer wasn’t worried. He said in an interview with MLB’s Keegan Matheson last March, “I feel great, actually. For me, it’s about the process. It’s not about the results. I want to make sure that I’m swinging at the right pitches and getting my swing off. Yeah, obviously everyone would like to see the ball hit the grass, but for me specifically, I’m working on the mechanical side of it.”

If the results didn’t show progress, did the underlying swing metrics tell a different story? It's hard to say for sure – public spring training Statcast data is still limited – but even the partial data hinted at a meaningful change.

Here are some key stats:

Season	Pull%	Swing%	SwStr%
2023	39.5%	49.3%	9.8%
2024	39.8%	43.3%	11.3%
Spring 2025	57.1%	38.0%	8.0%

It looked like he began swinging less, but also missing less at the pitches he did swing at, and he was hitting the ball to his pull side more than ever. All of which pointed to a deliberate mechanical adjustment that Springer had made.

If we had bat speed and more public Statcast data for spring training, then an increase in bat speed and in-zone swing rate may show more evidence of his adjustments in action. But seeing how his fast swing rate rose to 40.3% in 2025 (up from 22.4% and 24.4% the two years prior), and if you compare his 2024 regular season swing rate by zone to 2025 (as shown below), then it's fair to assume that the adjustment started in spring training.


This zone breakdown shows he wasn’t just taking a more passive approach at the plate. Springer became more selective and attacked the pitches he knew he could handle. In 2024, he expanded more to the outer edges, but in 2025, his zone tightened. He forced pitchers back into the heart of the zone because he stopped chasing at the edges. When they did challenge him, he did damage. That kind of zone discipline shift doesn’t happen by accident.

Now, what does this mean going into spring training 2026? Well, first things first, it's important not to dive too deep into surface-level spring stats. If Vladdy. hits .200, then ask these questions: Is the BAPIP unusually low? Are his swing decisions consistent? Is the hard-hit rate staying steady? You should also listen for some quotes from either Guerrero or the coaching staff; is he trying something new and still working out the kinks? Until all those questions have been answered, the concern level for any hitter should be low.

The same is true if Kevin Gausman or Trey Yesavage get their splitters hit around a bit, as long as the velocity and movement profiles remain intact. Dylan Cease has been playing around with a kick-change, and his spring training results may look quite different than usual if his main focus is getting repetitions on that pitch.

Look for pitchers, too, with big velocity jumps. If a young reliever comes into camp throwing harder than ever before, it could be a sign that they’ve unlocked another level and are ready to take another leap, even if the end of spring stat lines look a tad discouraging.

The storylines will write themselves. Someone we expect to have a good spring is going to struggle, and someone that no one is expecting much of right now will make headlines, but take everything with a grain of salt. Spring training isn’t about the box score; it's about signals. The marathon doesn’t start in March, but the first hints of who is ready often do.

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