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David Popkins striving to construct baseball’s ‘most creative lineup’ in first season with Blue Jays
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Photo credit: Jonathan Dyer-Imagn Images
Thomas Hall
Feb 28, 2025, 13:30 ESTUpdated: Feb 28, 2025, 12:55 EST
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The Toronto Blue Jays need to dramatically change how they create offence in 2025, and that’s precisely what new hitting coach David Popkins hopes to accomplish in Year 1 with the franchise.
After spending the past three seasons with the Minnesota Twins, working in the same role, Popkins is now tasked with improving one of the sport’s most underwhelming offences since 2023, which ranked tied for 14th in runs scored per game (4.6) two years ago and 23rd (4.14) last season. And there’s a certain way he’s going about the lineup’s identity shift.
“My philosophy is built off of creativity,” Popkins told MLB.com’s Keegan Matheson. “We’re trying to become the most creative lineup at scoring runs in baseball. We do that by practicing all of the different situations and clubs that we’re going to need in the game.”
Since the explosion of Toronto’s 2021 offence, which led the majors in home runs (262), slugging percentage (.466) and isolated power (.200), while finishing second in wRC+ (112) behind the Houston Astros (115), this group has become far too one dimensional in its approach.
Rather than selling out for power, they’ve gone the other way, prioritizing a high-contact, low-strikeout game plan over the last two seasons. In 2024, they finished with the third-highest contact rate (79.7 per cent), the sixth-lowest strikeout rate (20.3 per cent) and placed tied for the seventh-highest walk rate (8.4 per cent) among all 30 major league clubs.
That approach, however, while effective in certain situations, amounted to the Blue Jays earning a 101 wRC+ as a team, placing just one per cent above league average — tied for 13th in baseball. Additionally, they wound up placing 20th in SLG (.389), 22nd in ISO (.148) and 26th in home runs (156).
The Blue Jays’ lineup needs to become dangerous again, like it was during the ’21 and, to a lesser degree, ’22 seasons. They need to start attacking more often, especially in count-leverage situations (when the batter is ahead in the count), after ranking tied for 18th in SLG (.416) last season. And that’s something Popkins has continuously preached as he builds relationships with his new team.
“When you earn those counts, you have the right to get something off and if you chase a pitch, that’s OK,” Popkins said. “We have to give them forgiveness and tell them where they can fail. If you try to do everything, you’re not going to do anything. When you get in those spots, they probably felt that they didn’t want to chase, didn’t want to make a mistake. If you’re afraid to make a mistake, you lose that attack. If you’re not attacking, you’re getting attacked in this game. It’s about reminding guys that they’re dangerous.”
Another element of Popkins’ identity change for this Blue Jays offence is the importance of “damage.” Former offensive coordinator Don Mattingly, who’ll serve more as a traditional bench coach this season after overseeing the club’s offensive duties in ’24, described damage as a “scary word” last April as the team’s offensive woes began to arise.
But the new leader of Toronto’s offence — well known for combining all sorts of different sports analogies — isn’t as adverse to his hitters leaning into their A-swings. It can’t be an all-or-nothing approach. However, there should be a happy medium that combines the best of aggression and discipline altogether.
“You’ve got to take your knocks, take your jabs, take your toss to the running back, right?” Popkins said. “You’ve got to break them down and get them to overcommit, then we can go back over the top. That’s how I think of it. Are we always going to work on our damage swings, though? One hundred per cent. I love damage.”
For a lineup that still features Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette — both of whom are free agents after this season — and added slugger Anthony Santander over the off-season, there’s no reason the Blue Jays shouldn’t create more damage in 2025. But they’ll need others to pull their weight, too.
The onus can’t solely be on those three to carry this offence across a 162-game schedule. It’ll be just as vital to receive meaningful contributions from Daulton Varsho, George Springer, Alejandro Kirk, Andrés Giménez and a few surprise stories from the organization’s younger crop of position players.
It’s a massive challenge for Popkins, who’s changing how Toronto’s hitters digest information from the coaching staff this spring, particularly involving their pre-game reports, as Matheson wrote. But so far, he seems more than ready to tackle anything thrown his way — to use a sports pun.

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