Addison Barger’s push for power earns him a spot on Blue Jays’ 40-man roster

TORONTO – Over their previous two seasons collectively at low-A Dunedin, advanced-A Vancouver, double-A New Hampshire and, most lately, the Salt Rivers Rafters within the Arizona Fall League, Addison Barger and Zac Britton would say a phrase to one another earlier than their video games.

It’s, properly, the NSFW model of, “Fuzz it.”

“Because that’s the attitude you’ve got to have out there,” explains Barger, the slugging shortstop prospect the Toronto Blue Jays added to their 40-man roster final week. “I tell myself, you know what? I’m just playing for fun, who cares what I do, how I do. I’m just here to have fun. And that usually relaxes me and keeps me mentally stable, as weird as it sounds.” 

The angle has definitely labored properly for the 23-year-old, who’s bulked up since being chosen out of Tampa’s C. Leon King High School within the sixth spherical of the 2018 draft, reworking himself from an all-around, high-contact hitter right into a left-handed energy bat.

In 124 complete video games at Vancouver, New Hampshire and triple-A Buffalo this previous season, Barger slugged .555 with 26 homers, 33 doubles and two triples earlier than going deep twice extra in a comparatively quiet 16 AFL video games.

While there was definitely rather a lot to love about his numbers, to Barger “my ability to bounce back and stay consistent was what I was most happy about.”

“I could have a couple bad games, maybe a bad week, and then be mentally stable enough to go out the next week and do something, win player of the week or have a really good week,” he continues. “You’re going to have times when you struggle, but you’ve got to stay afloat, keep your mentality straight, you can’t get too down. I was able to do that pretty well.”

Pretty properly sufficient that he’s now ranked because the membership’s No. 5 prospect by Baseball America and is a part of the infield depth combine with the Blue Jays, alongside Otto Lopez and Vinny Capra, who was non-tendered Friday however re-signed Sunday to a minor-league deal. Britton, Barger’s pre-game mantra accomplice, is a catcher/outfielder whose growth additionally bears watching.

Intriguingly, Barger can be certainly one of three left-handed bats added to the 40-man roster within the final two weeks, together with outfielder Nathan Lukes and first baseman/outfielder Spencer Horwitz, because the Blue Jays construct some stability beneath whoever they find yourself including to the big-league membership.

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No matter what these strikes are and the way they pan out, they’re nonetheless going to want some assist to emerge from the system over the subsequent couple of years, each to help the roster and create among the monetary effectivity obligatory to increase members of the present core.

That definitely leaves open a pathway for Barger, who has plus-arm-strength, sufficient skill to stay at brief or slide over to different infield spots and, most significantly of all, that left-handed energy swing.

It wasn’t all the time that means for him, as he was a sixth-round decide extra due to his all-around recreation fairly than projections that he’d at some point hit homers.

Often the smallest participant on the sector rising up – “My junior year I was 5-4, 100 pounds and even when I got drafted I was 150 pounds,” he says – Barger determined that “he wanted to be physical, wanted to get bigger” and capitalized on the cancelled 2020 season’s downtime.

When he took the sector once more in 2021, he stated he weighed in at 210 kilos and had change into “a completely different hitter.”

“Coming out of high school, I was more a guy that would just try to put the ball in play. There’s no problem with walking, obviously, but I would be kind of looking for walks,” he says. “I decided I want to be a power hitter, I wanted to be an aggressive hitter and I worked really hard to try to become that and it’s working for me.”

The energy and weight achieve didn’t come by likelihood, however as an alternative was a product of his personal planning and periods with coach Jason Riley, whom he’s labored with since he was 14. Barger “took a lot of time to actually research biomechanics” unbiased of the Blue Jays as a result of “a lot of guys do what they’re told and maybe it works for them, maybe not,” and he wasn’t going to go away issues to likelihood.

“I feel like as players, we need to take initiative and figure out what works best for us,” he says. “Some things work different for other guys, but if you’re only concern is not getting injured, you’re probably not going to be working that hard.”

So, he spent “a lot of time in the gym” and did “a lot of eating,” all whereas persevering with to work out within the yard batting cage and infield at his household’s Tampa house. By taking groundballs as he stuffed out, Barger maintained his co-ordination and athleticism ranging for balls to his left and proper, whereas on the plate, he adjusted to the advantages of newfound energy.

“The ball just jumps off the bat differently,” he says. “You feel like you don’t have to swing real hard to hit the ball hard. It was definitely weird going from a smaller guy having to swing real hard to hit anything and then now that you have the size and strength, like wow, you can let it come to you.”

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The distinction confirmed that season wherein he performed 91 video games at Dunedin and 5 extra at Vancouver, hitting a mixed 18 homers, 22 doubles and two triples. Still, the manufacturing got here at a worth as he struck out 129 instances in 393 plate appearances, a worrying 32.8 per cent clip, that might have been a hazard signal as he moved up the system.

Instead, he ate into that quantity as he climbed the ladder, dropping his strike out fee to 24.9 per cent whereas sustaining a stroll fee of 9 per cent whereas additionally pushing his batting common up from .244 to .308.

Part of that enchancment was catching up for the misplaced time of 2020 as his strategy stays “jumping on the pitch you like early on in the count and crushing it.”

And Barger isn’t resting on that, both, having already returned to the gymnasium to rebuild the scale and energy misplaced over a protracted yr and programmed a few pitch shapes that gave him a troublesome time this season into the iPitch machine he purchased final low season.

“I’ll hammer that down a lot,” he says.

All of which can set Barger up for his first big-league camp subsequent spring, and a interval of alternative to observe.

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