Why Blue Jays outfielder Daulton Varsho is on track for his best offensive season

While getting to the World Series can hardly be called an unsuccessful season, one member of the Toronto Blue Jays who may have been frustrated with how last year went was Daulton Varsho. The Blue Jays centerfielder since 2023 started the year on the IL due to offseason shoulder surgery. He returned in May and was hot at the plate for about a month, before he got hurt again.

Varsho was back in the lineup at the beginning of August and, more or less, picked up where he left off. Over the final two months of the regular season Varsho slashed .256/.310/.551 with an .861 OPS and 12 home runs in 47 games. He then wore down somewhat in the playoffs. While he racked up an impressive 17 hits, with three home runs and eight total extra base hits, he struck out 19 times and had just four walks.

The strikeouts and low OBP skills have always been a knock against Varsho, with 594 career strikeouts and a .295 career OBP. But those numbers might be about to change and if Spring Training 2026 is any indication, the impending free agent could be on the verge of his best offensive season.

Daulton Varsho's Spring Training numbers are hard to ignore

Going into Friday's Grapefruit Leage action (Mar. 13) Varsho has seemingly completely changed his approach at the plate for the better. While most of the Blue Jays of 2025 subscribed to a contact first - contact hard type of approach, Varsho was still the guy who went up to the plate looking for those big daddy hacks every time up. His strikeout percentage was 28.4%, the highest it's been since his rookie season in 2020. But, he hit the ball harder than he's ever hit it before, with a hard hit percentage of 40.3% and his average exit velocity jumped to 88.5 mph.

So what could Varsho do to even out these numbers? The Blue Jays would love for him to keep tearing the cover off the ball, but maybe not at the expense of striking out almost a third of the time. Well whatever work Varsho put in during the offseason seems to be paying off early in the spring.

Varsho has a 6.3 swinging strike percentage. League average is roughly 10% while 6% or lower is considered elite and Varsho is right on that cusp. Varsho has never had that stat personally sit under double digits in any given season, and most years he's been above the 12% threshold which is considered to be among the worst when it comes to plate discipline. In 2025, Varsho was at the bottom on the Blue Jays with a 15.4% swinging strike percentage.

Lowering that percentage should lower his overall strikeout rate, which should in turn help him get on-base more, either by drawing more walks, or putting the ball in play more often. So far he's done the latter of those. Varsho his slashing .393/.433/.714 with an OPS of 1.148. Most of that damage has come courtesy of his .385 BABIP as he's only drawn one walk. But if that's the trade off the Blue Jays will gladly take it as he has 11 hits in his first 30 at-bats.

He's also pulled his hard hit percentage up to an absurd 55.6% while his average exit velocity sits at 93.8 mph. So not only is Varsho being more selective, he's continuing to hit the ball harder than he ever has in his career.

Now that kind of production is highly unsustainable, but if Varsho can find the middle ground between his ability to get on-base this spring and the lack of doing that in 2025, along with staying healthy, Varsho could end up being one of the hottest outfielders going into free agency . And in the meantime, he'll be a key part of the Blue Jays ability to win games in 2026.