TORONTO — One day in the batting cage a few weeks back, Davis Schneider and Lou Iannotti were discussing different types of swing sequences to better load weight onto the back hip and keep the upper half of the body and hands aligned. They’d watched some video of Joc Pederson, but the more they broke things down, the Toronto Blue Jays assistant hitting coach, who’d come over from the Los Angeles Dodgers system, told the slugger that what he was trying to do sounded like what Will Smith does at the plate.
A master at mimicking different batting stances, Schneider said, “all right, I’ll just copy him and see what happens,” adopting the all-star catcher’s hands-high start and pulling them down to his usual, by-the-shoulder launch spot. “My hands naturally go down, so having them up just gets them to the (right) spot (to launch). I’m going to change it probably in a couple weeks, that’s just what I do. But I feel like I’m in a good spot. I’m seeing the ball well.”
Well enough that manager John Schneider decided to bat him leadoff against Max Fried on Wednesday, as the New York Yankees once again treated the baseball like a hand grenade and the Blue Jays capitalized for an 8-4 win that clinched the season series.
Davis Schneider helped create some of the Yankees’ chaos, walking with one out in the fifth, advancing to second on one wild pitch before taking third, along with George Springer after he’d walked, on another. Both he and Springer then scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a weak chopper up the third-base line that Fried fielded and, unwisely, fired home, the ball squirting away from catcher J.C. Escarra for the first of four New York errors.
That put the Blue Jays up 4-2, but after a two-run homer from Aaron Judge in the sixth tied the game, Cody Bellinger lost a lazy fly ball to right field by Ernie Clement that went for a triple in the bottom half of the inning. Myles Straw followed with a go-ahead double and then scored when first baseman Ben Rice booted a Will Wagner smash.
In the seventh, Guerrero opened the inning with a single and took second when Jasson Dominguez misplayed the ball in left field, with Bo Bichette following with a two-run homer that made it 8-4.
The Yankees tried to out-homer all those miscues, but Dominguez’s solo shot in the second and Anthony Volpe’s solo shot in the fifth ahead of Judge’s two-run shot in the sixth weren’t enough.
Chris Bassitt gave up those three drives over 7.1 otherwise strong innings and then watched as lefty Justin Bruihl gave up consecutive singles to lefties Trent Grisham and Bellinger before getting Judge to hit into an inning-ending double play.
Yariel Rodriguez then handled the ninth as the Blue Jays (60-42) improved to 7-3 this season against the Yankees (56-46), while pushing their lead back up to four games atop the AL East before a sellout crowd of 42,143. They open an intriguing four-game series at the Detroit Tigers on Thursday when best record in the American League will be on the line as two teams mix-and-matching their rosters to success clash.
Davis Schneider is a part of that, and growing up, he used what he called “the most generic, white-guy, MLB The Show stance,” but once he reached East Regional High School in Vorhees, N.J., he began his now long-running custom of frequent switches. At different points of his prep days, he mimicked Bryce Harper, Paul Goldschmidt and Springer at the plate, which “is kind of funny now that I’m playing with George.”
After the Blue Jays picked him in the 28th round of the 2017 draft, “I did Bo (Bichette) for a couple of games, in 2019, I did Bellinger when he was having his MVP year. I did Pete Alonso during games. I do (Aaron) Judge from time-to-time during a (batting practice) round. Hunter (Mense, another Blue Jays assistant hitting coach who worked with him in the minors) always jokes that whoever was doing well in the big-leagues, I kind of copied. I just fiddle with stuff.”
At the same time, there’s some method to that madness.
“I like to feel different things, like why do guys do this, what do they feel?” Schneider explained. “The way Judge hits is unique. He’s so quick and what he does makes sense. I know a lot of people disagree a bit with what his swing does, but it works for him and he’s so quick and gets behind the ball really well. If I can just try to feel that sometimes and go into my regular stance, it’s going to incorporate.”
And Schneider is always watching.
In Sacramento before the all-star break, for instance, he noticed the way Athletics shortstop Jacob Wilson shuffles his feet in the batter’s box to help the timing of his load and decided to try that, too.
“He gets to that backside really well and he gets to that launch spot, too,” said Schneider. “I want to get into the heel, and that just helps me get a little bit more rhythm there.”
Ultimately, while the batting stance may change, the way Schneider starts his swing does not, so what he’s really doing is trying to find the best path to the spot.
“That’s literally what it is,” he said. “Hunter always used to say, I don’t care what you do, as long as you get to the spot where you launch from. I feel comfortable with the way I’m starting now. And that might change in two weeks. We’ll see.”
