Blue Jays would love for George Springer's Silver Slugger form to show up any day now

With the Toronto Blue Jays shockingly catapulting themselves back into the playoff picture, the time has come to critically analyze every piece of their suddenly overachieving roster. Most of it is good: Alejandro Kirk is playing like an All-Star again, rookies Brett Bateman and Charles McAdoo have been sensational in August, and Dylan Cease is making things mighty interesting in the AL Cy Young race.

However, not everyone is pulling their weight. George Springer is where I'm opting to place most of my ire these days, even though a number of the team's most recognizable players -- including Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Ernie Clement, and Kazuma Okamoto -- are all performing poorly in August.

Springer, set to turn 37 next month, simply just looks lost at the plate right now. He's hitting .257/.303/.329, good for a 78 wRC+. It's one of his worst overall months since 2024, despite the fact that he's benefitting from his best BABIP (.316) all year.

If the Blue Jays are going to complete their miraculous comeback and make the playoffs, they'll need a far better version of their veteran DH to show up over the next five weeks.

George Springer has lost the improved approach he showcased in July, and the Blue Jays are suffering as a result

No one could have reasonably expected Springer to follow up his miraculous 2025 performance with a similar encore, seeing as he posted the second-best OPS of his career (.959) at 35 years of age. That earned him a Silver Slugger Award as the best DH in the American League, which was the third time he received that honor in his career.

This year won't mark the fourth, but we did see glimpses of that old Springer recently. Back in July, he posted a huge 147 wRC+, slugging .516 for his best power output in all of 2026. It's not hard to detect what was behind that jump; he changed his batted-ball profile, focusing more on line drives at the cost of, mostly, groundballs. That did lead to him pulling the ball less, but a more center-field-oriented approach also guided him to a nice spike in his hard-hit rate.

Well, here we are in August, and he's back into his summer slump form. He's hitting line drives at about two-thirds of the rate he did last month, and his groundball rate (52.6%) has jumped dramatically as a result. He's still going to center field with regularity, meaning this cold snap is likely the cause attack angle issues, rather than timing ones; hence, it's no surprise that his hard-hit rate has dropped off a cliff, from 40.7% to 26.3%.

Whatever the root cause, it's clear that Springer isn't helping this lineup right now. His peak form might be lost to the past, but even what he showed us in July would go a long way toward keeping the Blue Jays relevant in the AL Wild Card race down the stretch.

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