TORONTO — David Popkins can pinpoint the exact moment when the light bulb went off for Andrés Giménez.
The Toronto Blue Jays hitting coach had been engaged in conversations with Gimenez about his swing mechanics ever since the club acquired the second baseman in the off-season.
They’d worked on having Giménez add a leg kick, something that he had used in the past, but the change just didn’t feel seamless to the left-handed hitter during the early days of spring training. He didn’t want to stray too far from the toe-tap that he’d used across the past three seasons.
Popkins felt Giménez could use some convincing and so that’s when he pulled his ace card.
On March 3, when the Blue Jays were visiting the Detroit Tigers for a Grapefruit League game in Lakeland, Fla., Popkins showed Giménez a video from 2021. It featured the infielder playing for the Guardians’ triple-A affiliate and, at the plate, he sported an open stance with a big coil of his front leg — something Giménez picked up while with the New York Mets in 2020 and carried with him after he was traded to Cleveland.
Back then, Giménez produced some serious exit velocity and the Blue Jays coach assured him that it hadn’t vanished. He simply needed to unearth it.
So, Giménez decided to finally reinstate the leg kick to his swing.
“It was instant,” Popkins recalls. “That day, he hit (batting practice) and it looked like he was swinging at 50 per cent and he was hitting balls out. And he was like, ‘I like that feeling.’”
That carried right into the game as Giménez blasted a 107.2-m.p.h triple to right-centre field and added a 99.6-m.p.h. double to the left-centre gap.
“He was like, ‘Yeah, this feels really good,’” says Popkins. “And from there, he just took off.”
Giménez has indeed taken off. The 26-year-old has opened the season as the Blue Jays’ most productive hitter, launching three of the team’s five home runs while posting a 1.131 OPS across the first seven games. He’s batted in the No. 4 spot in each of those contests and while his five-foot-11, 161-pound frame doesn’t scream cleanup hitter, the results are undeniable.
“It doesn’t surprise us,” Jays manager John Schneider said recently. “Probably surprises a lot of people, but it doesn’t surprise us.”
Popkins, hired by the Blue Jays this off-season, was familiar with Giménez before the two arrived in the Blue Jays organization. During his time as hitting coach for the Minnesota Twins, Popkins had a front-row seat to Giménez’s at-bats for the division-rival Guardians and took note of a player who oozed potential.
“He would occasionally get off a swing and you’re like, ‘What is that? That looks incredible,’” says Popkins. “So dynamic. So athletic. And then, as I kept seeing him, the moves got a little bit tighter and smaller and more rigid. And he’d really started to cap his athleticism in the box.”
After the Blue Jays acquired Giménez in the December trade that sent Spencer Horwitz to Cleveland, Guardians manager Stephen Vogt offered a scouting report on the infielder to Schneider at the Winter Meetings.
Giménez had developed a tendency to “play it safe,” Vogt said, and that resulted in a recent approach that was geared toward shooting singles to the opposite field. It was almost like he was hitting with two strikes all of last year.
That wasn’t traditionally the case, though. Back in 2022, Giménez ditched his leg kick and opted for more of a toe-tap in his front foot set-up. The switch helped him hit .297/.371/.466 with 17 home runs and a 141 OPS-plus in what was easily his best offensive season. Despite regressing during the 2023 and ’24 campaigns — his OPS fell to .712, then .638 — he continued to stick with the toe-tap.
When Giménez first met Popkins at the Blue Jays’ player development complex in Dunedin, Fla., they had a conversation about potentially bringing back the leg kick and getting a full coil from an athletic, open stance in the batter’s box.
“We had a great conversation at the beginning of camp,” Giménez says. “And even when I was traded, I got a call from him. We were talking positive things about it. He knows how to give you confidence as a hitter.”
When discussing his blueprint for Giménez’s swing, Popkins mentions the second baseman’s work in the field. Giménez is revered for being an elite defender, so why not tap into that same athleticism at the dish?
“Our goal was how athletic, how big and dynamic can we make you?” says the coach. “It was freeing him up to allow him to be as big and sexy as you can be. And whatever comes out is probably going to be a good move.”
Giménez tinkered with the alterations in the opening days of spring training and added a small lift to his front foot, but nothing like the coil he once had. It was a safe attempt that was akin to dipping his toe in the water.
Then, in early March, Popkins shared the old video and offered some reasoning.
“We showed him his numbers when he’s had more dynamic swings and sometimes he might strike out a little more,” said Popkins. “But his OPS is a lot higher. It’s about finding the trade-off — a sweet spot for him where you got the hitter and then you got the slugger, and you put them together and you get this really dynamic piece.”
That was the final push Giménez needed. He enjoyed a strong spring and has carried that into the regular season.
According to new Baseball Savant data, Giménez exhibits a batting stance that’s 19-degrees open, compared to three-degrees last year, when his legs were much more even in the box. The distance between his feet has shrunk to 29.5 inches from 37.8 and he’s added 1.8 m.p.h. to his bat speed and 5.8 m.p.h. to his average exit velocity.
“I feel like every year is different,” says Giménez. “Every year, you have to make some adjustments because the pitchers make adjustments as well. How are they going to throw to you? How do you attack?
“I just feel like with hitting, if you feel good, good things probably are going to happen.”
