When the Toronto Blue Jays first acquired infielder Andrés Giménez and reliever Nick Sandlin from the Cleveland Guardians back in November, much of the fan base wasn’t exactly pleased with the front office’s first notable move of the off-season, especially since it meant including first baseman Spencer Horwitz in the trade.

On the surface, it appeared the team had moved on from one of its most productive hitters from last season — Horwitz finished second among Blue Jays hitters in wRC+ (127), behind only Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (165) — and outfield prospect Nick Mitchell, a 2024 draft selection, in exchange for a package centred around a glove-first second baseman in Giménez.

The initial fear for most was that Toronto had acquired the infield version of Daulton Varsho, whose case as one of the sport’s top defensive outfielders was cemented after he secured his first-career Gold Glove Award in ’24. Giménez, also an elite defender, captured three Gold Gloves in Cleveland — all consecutively from 2022-24.

After winning a second straight AL Team Gold Glove Award, adding another quality defender didn’t exactly stand out as a top priority for the Blue Jays over the off-season, at least not compared to their search for more offence. Early on, though, the deal has proven impactful on both sides of the ball.

But where it’s had the biggest impact has, without question, been most surprising.

Atop this club’s lineup features a potent trio of Bo Bichette, Guerrero and Anthony Santander. Few teams outside of the Los Angeles Dodgers (Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman/Teoscar Hernández) and New York Mets (Francisco Lindor, Juan Soto, Pete Alonso) can match that level of superstar talent at the top of their order.

However, through the first five games of the season, none of Toronto’s top three currently lead the team in home runs, RBIs, slugging percentage or FanGraphs’ wins above replacement. Instead, that honour belongs to Giménez, who, after reaching base safely in all four plate appearances Monday, has gone 6-for-18 (.333) with a team-leading three home runs, five RBIs, a .944 SLG (had to do a double-take here) and has nearly accounted for half a win above replacement per fWAR.

With his solo blast against Washington Nationals right-hander and Calgary, Alb., native Michael Soroka a night ago, the team’s most unlikely clean-up hitter set a franchise record for the most home runs hit during a player’s first five games with the organization.

Not too shabby for someone who only registered nine home runs last season, right? It’s only taken five games for Giménez to tally one-third of his ’24 home run total, an accomplishment that’s even more impressive considering he didn’t hit his third dinger until May 19 of last year. At his current rate, his odds of becoming a first-time 20-home-run hitter have never been higher — with his current career-high sitting at 17.

Almost everyone thought the Blue Jays were crazy for having Giménez pencilled in as the clean-up hitter on Opening Day against the Baltimore Orioles last Thursday, and understandably so. This is someone who posted a 96 wRC+ in 2023 with the Guardians and a miserable 83 figure last season — placing 17 per cent below league average (100). Nobody could’ve forecasted this type of offensive explosion with how poor things were a season ago.

To Giménez’s credit, though, he isn’t the same hitter he was in ’24. The work he put in with Toronto’s hitting department in spring training, led by new hitting coach David Popkins, laid the groundwork for his early-season transformation at the plate.

The Blue Jays’ staff had him tearing the cover off the ball during exhibition play, resulting in a 45-per-cent hard-hit rate in games where data tracking was available, and that encouraging trend has carried over into the regular season, as the left-handed-hitting infielder has produced a hard-hit ball (95 m.p.h. or higher) on over half of his 15 put in play this season — a significant spike from his 27.8-per-cent hard-hit rate across 2022-23.

Not only has Giménez been hitting balls harder early on, but he’s also been getting them in the air more often, doing so on nearly two-thirds of his 15 batted balls. It’s a small sample size but a notable one, considering half of his batted balls last season were on the ground. That led to a career-low 8.6-degree average launch angle, which he’s dramatically increased to a career-high 17.4 degrees this season.

Another area the Blue Jays hoped to improve was Giménez’s plate discipline, and that’s precisely what’s occurred across these first five games, as he’s swung and missed only six times on 36 swings (16.7 per cent) and chased outside the strike zone just a third of the time — both career bests, albeit over a tiny sample size.

And all this has transpired while Giménez has quickly become a highlight-reel defensive star on the right side of Toronto’s infield.

This version of Giménez — a now projected four-win player in 2025 per fWAR, a feat he hasn’t accomplished since ’22 (his All-Star season) — has the makings of becoming a difference-maker for the Blue Jays.

Chances are he won’t sustain his near-1.000 SLG over the long haul. Nor will he likely remain the club’s everyday clean-up hitter throughout this season. But, what started as wishful thinking has since become a reality as he aims to return to the All-Star hitter he was three seasons ago with Cleveland.

Acquiring Giménez last fall allowed the Guardians to dump the remainder of his seven-year, $106.5-million contract, which still has roughly $100 million left on it and runs through 2029 with a club option for ’30. Cleveland’s front office worried they wouldn’t receive another opportunity to get out from under it if he endured another woeful offensive performance. So, they found a taker in Toronto.

Thanks to Giménez’s explosive start, the early returns from that trade have been better than even the Blue Jays likely could’ve imagined. In all likelihood, his bat will eventually cool off. But even when it does, he’ll still offer his elite-level defence at second to maintain his impact status.

As a close-to-$20-million-per-season player, all Toronto is looking for from Giménez as a hitter is to be at least league average. With his fielding, he has the potential to be a four-win player, even as a league-average hitter. If he comes close to replicating his ’22 performance, though, his contract — previously viewed as a detriment — would become quite the bargain.

And let us not forget about the other half of the Andrés Giménez trade.

For a Blue Jays bullpen without Erik Swanson, Sandlin — under club control through 2027 — has quickly become an essential piece of the puzzle. While he’s only made three relief appearances thus far, it’s clear what he brings to the table: swing and miss.

Of those three outings, the right-hander has induced four strikeouts over 3.1 innings, generating a swing-and-miss on over a third of the 27 swings against him, with all but five of those whiffs coming via his slider — his primary offering, which generated a whiff rate above 40 per cent in ’24.

Among the keys to success for Sandlin is throwing enough strikes, which, admittedly, remains a work in progress, given he’s already surrendered a trio of walks this season. But it’s performances like Monday’s that provide a reason for optimism, as he punched out two of the four hitters he faced — one via a nasty wipeout slider and the other on a splitter — in a crucial seventh inning to help bridge the gap to Yimi García in the ninth on a night when closer Jeff Hoffman was unavailable.

It’s important to remember we’re only five games into the ’25 campaign, and there’s still plenty of time for storylines to shift — both positively and negatively. But of the limited results we have to analyze, the chances of Toronto coming out favourably on the Giménez-Sandlin return are much, much higher than they were, say, even a few weeks ago.