Our #3 Blue Jays prospect made his Major League debut on Wednesday night. It wasn’t productive, exactly, as he went 0-4 with a strikeout, but it was memorable. His first big league at bat ended with a deep fly ball, 105mph off the bat. It flew 397 feet, but unfortunately Kaufman Stadium is 410ft to centre field and it was caught on the track. His second at bat lead to a 91mph liner right off pitcher Alec Marsh’ shoulder, again going for an out but forcing Marsh to leave the game. Which is to say that the power that is Barger’s calling card was on display last night. Unfortunately, he also displayed his lack of a clear defensive home when he played a medium fly ball by Kyle Isbel into a triple.
The Jays’ 2018 sixth rounder jumped onto the scene in 2021, when he traded what had previously been a high contact, low power approach for an all or nothing home run hack that lead to 18 home runs in just 374 PA but also a strikeout rate of nearly a third. The story of his past three years has been finding a happy medium between those approaches. Beginning with a swinging strike rate of 18% in 2021, he chopped it to 12.7% in 2022, 10.3% last season, and just 8.0% (in the 83rd percentile for the International League) before his call up this season, all while raising his hard hit rate from 38% in 2021 to 47% this year.
As you can see in this video of Barger’s fly out, Barger has an unusual swing. As the pitch is delivered, he lifts his front leg and rotates until he’s practically showing his back to the mound, then unwinds from the ground up to whip his bat through the zone. It doesn’t look like a swing that’s conducive to contact, but at least for the last two years, that hasn’t been a problem. He has plenty of hand speed to catch up to good fastballs, making contact with 38 of 40 heaters at or above 95mph inside the zone that he’s swung on in his time in Buffalo. He’s able to adjust to breaking and off-speed stuff, too, with in-zone contact rates against sliders, curveballs, and change ups of 87%, 85%, and 84%, respectively, in 2023 and 2024.
His swing does look geared for power, and Barger has a lot of it. He reached a maximum exit velocity of 113.7mph last season, which would have tied him for 65th among 403 major leaguers to put at least 100 balls in play that season. He’s able to produce those high exit velocities regularly as well, as his hard hit rate demonstrates. He doesn’t get a lot of loft, though, with an average launch angle of 9.4 degrees that would be in the 20th percentile in MLB. That’s a change from 2021, when his 18.5 degree launch angle would have been in the top tenth of the league. The loss of lift is probably part of the trade he’s made in toning down his swing to make more and more consistently solid contact over the years, and if so it’s been a good trade for him. It’ll bear watching in the major leagues, though.
The plate discipline is solid, although his recent AAA numbers are inflated by the automated strike zone that’s been in trials in the International League. Since the beginning of 2023, he’s swung at 64.2% of pitches he’s seen inside the zone and 27.2% outside of it. Those numbers are both just a little below average compared to qualified MLB hitters so far this season, so it’s fair to say that Barger is patient but he’s not especially selective compared to the typical MLB player.
Taken all together, Barger looks likely to be a positive offensive player in the majors. It remains to be seen whether top level pitching can exploit his unorthodox swing, but he’s shown a knack for getting it on the ball over the past couple of years in the minor leagues, and his hand speed and plate discipline should allow him to get himself on at a respectable clip. If he can do that, his power will play and in the best case scenario he has the potential to produce as a lefty slugger in the mold of Joc Pederson. His defensive home remains uncertain, with actions that are sometimes shaky on the dirt and routes in the outfield that tend towards the scenic, but he’s a decent athlete with a plus arm who should be able to settle in usably somewhere on the defensive spectrum. The Jays’ 2B/3B/LF mix is crowded right now, with Ernie Clement, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Cavan Biggio and Davis Schneider all producing so far this season, so whether he even keeps his roster spot in the short run remains to be seen, but in the medium and longer term he has a good chance to be a contributor.