Four intriguing trends from Blue Jays spring training

Over the next three weeks or so, the Toronto Blue Jays will engage in the long-standing MLB tradition of trying to figure out to what degree what they see in spring training action matters.

While the team doesn’t have too many pre-season positional battles, it is a club with some roles up for grabs and plenty of internal valuations to do. The Blue Jays also have plenty of decisions to make shortly about which of their guys they will attempt to retain, whether younger players have the potential to fill holes that may arise, and even what the competitive direction of the team will be beyond 2025.

So, any opportunity they have to learn more about who’s in the building is valuable, even if what happens in spring training can be challenging to parse, thanks to uneven competition and the fact that many players are in experimentation mode rather than optimizing every at-bat.

Despite the degree of difficulty, it’s worth trying to figure out what early-spring trends might prove meaningful in the season to come — as the Blue Jays are undoubtedly doing. Here are four that might just tell us something about the months to come:

KIRK IS HITTING THE BALL HARD

Because Alejandro Kirk tends to run strikeout and walk rates that are well above average, the only thing preventing him from being a massive offensive threat is a lack of power production.

While his lack of speed turns the odd double into a single, his biggest issue in recent years has been an inability to hit the ball with authority. Over the past two seasons, his ISO (.107) ranks 214th among 230 MLB hitters with at least 700 plate appearances.

So far this spring, the ball has been leaping off his bat a little bit more. Kirk has already hit four balls at least 108 m.p.h., a threshold he cleared just six times during the entire 2024 season.

He also hit a home run to centre against a legitimate MLB starter in Mitch Keller — a notable result for a guy who hasn’t put one over the centre-field wall since June 2022.

When Kirk first arrived in the majors, his power was more than respectable. If he can recapture a bit of that, he’ll start making an impressive two-way contribution to the Blue Jays.

GIMÉNEZ’S CONTACT QUALITY

The offensive profile that Andrés Giménez brings to the table is not dissimilar to Kirk in the sense that he puts the ball in play a great deal, and any contact quality improvements have the potential to help him enormously.

His ceiling likely isn’t as high due to the lack of walks, but he also has the speed to stretch singles and beat out infield hits — and he’s been a more reliable source of home-run power in recent years. 

It’s not surprising that the two had similar 2023 seasons before Giménez hit a wall offensively last year.

All of that is to say that when Giménez shows any improvement in the type of contact he’s making, it’s particularly notable because he makes a lot of it.

During his Grapefruit League work in 2025, there has been a notable uptick in his exit velocity. An EV of 94.2 m.p.h. is impressive for a guy who managed an ugly 86.3 m.p.h. in 2024. He also has a hard-hit rate of 57.1 per cent compared to his 28.5 per cent last season — a number that ranked 257 among 284 hitters with at least 250 balls in play.

Of course, we’re dealing with a small sample size, but a couple of his individual hits have been particularly compelling. His triple on March 3 at 107.2 m.p.h. was his hardest-hit ball in the air since 2023, and two days later, he hit a line-drive single that would’ve been tied for his best mark last season.

Those numbers are far from world-beating, but they are notable in context. If Giménez can hit the ball a little bit harder in 2025, his offensive profile will become significantly more appealing.

BLOSS HAS SOME EXTRA JUICE

Considering Jake Bloss has a 14.40 Grapefruit League ERA, and he struggled at triple-A after arriving from Houston in the Yusei Kikuchi trade, he might seem like an odd pitcher to highlight.

While his first impression hasn’t been the cleanest, the way his repertoire is evolving is eye-opening.

Bloss has generally profiled as a fourth starter or so in large part because he doesn’t miss too many bats, and one of the reasons was the lack of an overwhelming four-seam fastball. In his brief MLB cameo, its velocity averaged 93.4 m.p.h., and 93.6 m.p.h. in triple-A.

In the spring, his four-seamer has sat at 94.7 m.p.h., and he’s hit a new high (96.6 m.p.h.). Despite one of his Grapefruit League outings coming in a ballpark without Statcast, he’s still been tracked throwing more than half as many 95-plus m.p.h. four-seamers (14) as he did in 105 innings between the majors and triple-A in 2024.

The command and results have not been there yet, but the idea of a relatively polished prospect harnessing a bit more raw stuff has to intrigue the Blue Jays.

BICHETTE’S BIG HOME RUN

Yet another Blue Jay who is fairly reliant on success with balls in play is finding it early in the spring. Throughout Bo Bichette’s career, he has posted a below-average walk rate and strong but not otherworldly home run rates. 

His ability to turn an extremely high percentage of his balls in play into hits has allowed him to be an offensive force. That ability deserved him last year.

Bichette also had the lowest full-season max exit velocity career (111.2 m.p.h.) and an expected wOBA on contact, falling to .347 after never keeping it above .400 in every other year of his career. 

Coming into camp, the biggest question about him was whether he’d lost some of his thump or 2024 was an injury-riddled mulligan. That question hasn’t been completely answered yet, but on March 2, he did the most he possibly could with a single swing.

It’s been a long time since Bichette made a ball disappear into the distance like that. To be specific, at 420 feet, it was his longest home run since April 9, 2024 — before his season took a rough turn.

This is not the most impressive home run we’ve ever seen from Bichette, and it doesn’t break new ground from an exit-velocity standpoint at 108.9 m.p.h., but it gives us a hint that the shortstop’s high-end power may be back.

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