The case of the Toronto Blue Jays’ early-season offensive woes can likely be sliced into two halves: injuries to several core hitters and struggling results from those who’ve stayed healthy.

After playing just 71 games last season, Daulton Varsho has, thankfully, veered away from that first injury-riddled group — a good thing, too, as an impending free agent. The 29-year-old has been firmly in that second mix to begin the 2026 campaign, though, underperforming alongside the likes of George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Lately, however, a light has appeared at the end of the tunnel and is growing brighter amid Varsho’s tough start to the season.

It was tough sledding out of the gate, as the left-handed-hitting outfielder slumped to a .236/.314/.390 slash line with just four home runs, nine RBIs and a 96 wRC+ (100 league average) across his first 36 games, spanning 137 plate appearances through May 8. But since then, his bat has awoken, slashing .353/.405/.559 with four extra-base hits — including last week’s walk-off grand slam in extra innings — and six RBIs over his last nine games, featuring a 171 wRC+.

Varsho’s most recent home run, an opposite-field shot that remains his lone round-tripper since April 30 in Minnesota, may be an indicator that better days are ahead. Those were the types of damage swings we saw from him when he was healthy last year — leading to 20 home runs and a career-high .548 SLG in fewer than 300 plate appearances — and throughout spring training a few months ago.

When he’s hitting balls with authority the other way, that’s when you know his swing is in a “good” place, manager John Schneider noted following last Wednesday’s comeback win over the Tampa Bay Rays.

For Varsho to be at his most dangerous, there still needs to be plenty of pull-side power to his approach, as evidenced by last season’s career-high 29.5 per cent pull air rate (includes non-groundballs). And he has a long way to go to improve this year’s clip, which has fallen almost 10 per cent from a season ago. But getting him right runs deeper than simply pulling everything.

He also needed to get back to what he does best: creating damage.

As you can see above, that’s precisely what Varsho has done over the last week-and-a-half. By improving his quality-of-contact metrics, his traditional results have also bounced back, primarily against right-handed pitching, which he carries a .400/.444/.680 slash line and 214 wRC+ against over his last 27 plate appearances entering Tuesday’s showdown versus New York Yankees righty Will Warren.

Based on Varsho’s recent surge of hitting balls hard to all fields, the left-handed thumper will remain a threat to leave the yard in both outfield corners, not just Yankee Stadium’s infamous short porch in right.

But it wasn’t like Varsho just decided one day that he should start generating hard contact again. It’s never that simple. For him, it took realizing that he was focusing too much on his swing mechanics in the batter’s box. Because of that, he had been chasing at-bats earlier this spring, looking to connect on one big swing to feel like everything had clicked — something Guerrero can certainly relate to.

That led to an abundance of poor swing decisions, as Varsho admitted last week, contributing to his career-high 35.9 per cent chase rate this season, which ranks in the 19th percentile of the majors — the lowest since he became a full-time major-leaguer in 2022.

Varsho has been making more contact than he ever has before to begin this season, earning an 83.6 per cent contact rate — a significant spike from last season’s 71.7 per cent clip. He entered ’26 hoping to evolve into more of an all-around, complete hitter rather than serving as a low-on-base, high-slug performer again.

But he had struggled to do either early on by swinging at pitches he wasn’t able to create damage against. That’s begun to change, however, now that he’s gone back to trusting his approach at the plate.

Simplifying is often the best remedy for ailments such as this. While Varsho is still expanding the strike zone more often than he’d probably like to, those aggressive swings have been easier to justify due to the promising quality of contact that he’s been generating with them.

Case in point, Varsho’s grand slam off Rays reliever Aaron Brooks (since outrighted to Triple-A) came on a 92.6-m.p.h. four-seamer that was 3.3 feet above the ground — the second-highest pitch he’s homered against as a Blue Jay — and also a few baseball lengths outside the strike zone.

This is the version of Daulton Varsho that the Blue Jays were counting on entering this season to provide middle-of-the-order thump in the post-Bo Bichette era — and with Anthony Santander likely sidelined for most, if not all, of the ’26 campaign. It’s just taken longer than anticipated for his bat to ignite.

Now that it has, maintaining that flame will be crucial for a struggling offence that sits closer to the bottom than the top of the major-league leaderboard in many offensive categories, entering Tuesday’s affair ranked 20th in home runs (44), 23rd in runs scored per game (4.13) and 24th in slugging percentage (.373).

The more runs this lineup can provide, the less stress it’ll place on their already heavily-worked pitching staff, particularly a bullpen that’s compiled the sixth-most innings (196.1) in baseball thus far while operating with minimal margin for error in the majority of those outings.

Off The Roster is Toronto sports. Hosted by Cabbie Richards, Lindsay Dunn, and Dan Riccio, this is the go-to morning conversation for everything happening in the 6ix – Hockey, Baseball, Basketball and everything in between. From breakout performances and questionable trades to throwback jerseys, viral moments, and the stories fans are actually talking about—it’s smart, sharp, and never scripted. Live weekday mornings on the Nation Network YouTube channel and available wherever you stream podcasts, the show delivers real opinions, real chemistry, and real Toronto energy. Missed an episode? Catch up anytime. Off The Roster—The new sound of the 6ix.