TORONTO – At the beginning of the week, George Springer felt like his swing was at long last coming together, and a home run against Ryan Weathers, his first since March 30, offered some positive reinforcement.
Up to that point, his numbers since coming off the injured list April 29 looked like those belonging to someone playing with a broken left big toe – 9-for-48 with a double and two RBIs in 13 games – which, of course, he was. On that fifth-inning drive off the New York Yankees lefty, on a 95.3 m.p.h. fastball he sent 403 feet, he felt like he’d found a “mechanical groove” but cautioned that “there's a long way to go.”
“I really like my at-bats. I've been hitting the ball. I haven't been hitting it as hard as I would like to be. But the process of where I'm hitting the ball – up the middle but back on the left side a little bit – has been good,” the Toronto Blue Jays DH continued. “Mechanically, getting back into the flow of my swing every day, it's starting to show up. Obviously, I'd like the scoreboard to say something different. But I feel like I've started to control my strike zone a little bit more.”
Springer followed with hits in each game since, including a tone-setting leadoff homer against Paul Skenes that ran his hit streak to six games in a 5-2 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Down 0-2 in the count, he turned on an upper-rail fastball at 97.8 m.p.h. from the NL Cy Young Award winner and sent it 396 feet to left for his third homer this week, more than doubling his previous total. Along with a double in the fifth, it was another day of quality contact from Springer, who, along with opening the scoring, also demonstrated the type of approach against Skenes that manager John Schneider was preaching.
“You've got to get him out-over as much as you can and pick not a pitch, but an area of the plate, and try to grind him down as much as you can,” Schneider said before the game. “You've got to take advantage when you get guys on. ... But this is like a hard-hat day. ... You've got to be ready to hit. He's not going to pitch around you. He's going to be in the zone with some pretty good stuff.”
The Blue Jays followed suit, building opportunities in the second, fourth and fifth innings before breaking through with a three-spot in the sixth on an RBI double by Jesus Sanchez, a run-scoring single from Ernie Clement and, after Skenes came out, Andres Gimenez’s double-play ball that scored Sanchez for a 4-1 lead.
That led to an uncharacteristically poor line for Skenes – four runs on nine hits and a walk with two strikeouts in five-plus innings – and made it four straight wins, also beating Cam Schlittler, Carlos Rodon and Bubba Chandler during this run.
They’re now 25-27 and will try for a sweep of the Pirates on Sunday when Dylan Cease starts against Mitch Keller.
Springer, meanwhile, will try to extend his hit streak and his return to form, which he described as a "byproduct of everything” while he tries to work around a toe that’s still broken.
“I'm not going to make an excuse about it – I chose to play,” he said. “At the end of the day, I know what I have to do, and I know what I'm dealing with from a foot perspective. But the further we get away from the injury, the more I feel like I'm going to be able to impact the ball.”
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