How a swing adjustment helped unlock Daulton Varsho’s power

PITTSBURGH — Last Tuesday, as he looked for any approach out of the deep droop that had him hitting .122/.244/.176 over a 21-game stretch, Daulton Varsho pulled up some video on his cellphone from his school ball days on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Things got here a lot simpler on the plate again then. Varsho hit .381 as a sophomore and raked his technique to a 1.113 OPS with 28 extra-base hits over 54 video games in his junior 12 months earlier than the Arizona Diamondbacks drafted him in 2017. What was it that allowed him to have a lot success? What was he doing on the plate then that he was lacking now?

Turned out it was truly what he wasn’t doing. There was no toe faucet in his swing. Only a small leg kick — the identical one he had when he posted an .899 OPS at double-A in 2019. The similar one he toyed with in 2021 and ‘22 when he was struggling on the plate. The similar one you may need seen him making an attempt out only some months in the past in spring coaching.

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“I’m a tinkerer. I try to do a lot of different things,” Varsho says. “Obviously, I’m a feel hitter. So, when you’re not feeling what you want to feel, you have to try something else. And this was kind of an athletic move for me to try to just find that feel again. And just be able to do it. And it’s working out.”

No kidding. Literally the evening he eradicated the toe faucet and introduced again his leg kick, Varsho went 2-for-4 with a double and residential run. The subsequent evening it was a single and a homer. The evening after that? Two extra knocks.

In all, Varsho is batting .458/.462/.958 over six video games since making the swing adjustment. His 11 hits — six of them for extra-bases — in that span are probably the most he’s ever had in a six-game stretch since his MLB debut in 2020. Sunday, he hit a ball filter of PNC Park. What a distinction a little bit leg kick makes.

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“I’ve done this move before. I knew it was an option. But it wasn’t until I was going through all that old film that I was like, ‘All right, I think I need to get back to it and feeling athletic in the box again instead of feeling robotic,’” Varsho stated. “That’s the biggest thing for me — I’m just trying to feel athletic in the box. And, obviously, trying to square up some more baseballs.”

That’s been the factor that stood out most starkly by means of Varsho’s struggles earlier this season. He was nonetheless attending to loads of pitches, operating a career-high 78.9 per cent by means of the top of April ranked inside the prime half of the league. But his 22.5 per cent hard-hit fee was inside the backside quarter; and his 84.1-m.p.h. common exit velocity was a sixth percentile mark.

A harmful hitter who’s demonstrated a capability to hit balls over 110-mph every of the final three seasons, Varsho wasn’t discovering methods to faucet into that uncooked energy typically sufficient. When they slowed down video of his swing, Blue Jays hitting coaches seen Varsho’s palms have been getting caught in the course of his load. They weren’t pulling again far sufficient to hold power by means of the zone. For no matter motive, the toe faucet was disconnecting his swing.

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“I’m trying to hit a lot of pitches and be able to be on time for a lot of things. And, obviously, I’ve backed a lot of pitches up too much in the early going here,” Varsho stated. “I needed to find a way to be more athletic in the box — to allow myself to adjust to different pitches and hit the ball hard. I’m trying to keep it more simplified instead of trying to create a step-to-step process.”

And Varsho felt that instantly with the swing change. Even although he flew out in his first plate look, he did so by working a full depend, attacking a great pitch to hit, and hitting it exhausting to the other subject at 98.2-mph off his bat. Jogging again to the dugout, Varsho felt good concerning the out he’d made.

His subsequent time up? Varhso lined the primary pitch he noticed into left-centre at 104.2-mph for a double. And the time after that? He crushed a pitch 406-feet:

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“I think with Daulton, [the leg kick] just allows him to do use his bat speed a little bit more with what he’s doing,” stated Blue Jays supervisor John Schneider. “Watching his swing, it looked like he was almost stuck at times. And I think you see some chases and some pop-ups. It’s tough to be really good when you’re stationary, when you’re stagnant. And I think this frees him up a little.”

There have been actually some chases and a few pop-ups during the last a number of weeks for Varsho, significantly towards elevated fastballs on the inside half. And the league notices issues like that. Here’s the place pitchers have been finding their fastballs towards Varsho this season:

[Varhso fastballs heat map]

Of course, Varsho is aware of there’s a gap in his plate protection there. He’s lived it. And there’s no leg kick silver bullet that’s going to permit him to get his barrel to pitches in that location. Rather, he’s hoping his new-old mechanics will assist him see these pitches higher — or at the very least for a fraction of a second longer. And, ideally, lay off of them extra persistently.

“That’s not a pitch you want to hit. You don’t want to hit what you’re weak at,” Varsho stated. “So, if a pitcher locates three up-and-in, then I’m going to tip my cap and walk right back to the bench knowing that, ‘OK, he did his job.’ That happens when a guy’s on and he’s able to locate. But for a lot of guys, making them do that three times in a row — it’s pretty hard.”

That’s Varsho’s mindset. If a pitcher can hit that spot thrice, good for him. Varsho will take these strikeouts in the event that they occur. It’s the events when a pitcher misses whereas making an attempt to hit that spot that Varsho desires to be prepared for. Like this one on Sunday, when Roansy Contreras tried to hit that spot with a heater however let the pitch leak again out over the plate:

“You’ve just got to understand that you have to look for your pitch — not always their pitch. Pitchers are going to make mistakes. They’re going to make them over the heart of the plate,” Varsho says. “And you just have to capitalize when you see it.”

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