After addressing shoulder issue, Blue Jays’ Biggio ready to compete

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Cavan Biggio’s been dealing with left shoulder tendinitis off-and-on for a couple seasons. Nothing major; just something he has to stay on top of. But this winter, the issue stubbornly refused to respond to treatment. And come the beginning of spring training, Biggio’s shoulder wasn’t where it needed to be. That made the first half of Blue Jays camp a challenge of patience for the 28-year-old utility player.

As his teammates focused on skill development with Blue Jays coaches through live batting practices into games, Biggio spent more time with physical therapists, focused on strengthening his shoulder and increasing its range of motion. He wasn’t able to work on areas of his swing and approach that he’d entered camp intending to improve. He was held out of the first two weeks of Grapefruit League play, missing out on what he feels is the most valuable training tool of all — in-game plate appearances.

But entering his ninth professional season — and sixth as a big-leaguer — Biggio’s learned to manage frustration and not rush the process. He continued to work on his defensive skillset at the array of positions (second, third, first, and right field) he’ll play this season. Meanwhile, he dutifully checked each rehab box along the way, deliberately building up from dry swings to tee work to front flips to on-field batting practice to hitting off a high-velocity pitching machine.

Late last week, he finally got back into games. And he has four hits (three doubles) plus two walks in 10 plate appearances since.

“Yeah, this spring was a little different. But I couldn’t be happier with where I’m at,” he says. “It’s felt good to get back into games and finally work on things offensively. There’s nothing like going into the box and competing.”

“Competing” is how Biggio would describe the mindset he feels helped him reverse a vexing, early-2023 slump and finish the season on one of the most consistent offensive runs he’s experienced in his major-league career. From May 24 on, Biggio hit .265/.378/.407 with a 124 wRC+ and a pronounced-even-for-him 13.3-per-cent walk rate. As the Blue Jays fought to solidify their post-season position through the month of September, Biggio took on an every-day role, regularly facing both right- and left-handed pitching after starting the season in a part-time platoon.

“I just found consistency. With the thought process I had through the middle and end of the year, with my approach, with my swing day in and day out,” Biggio says. “Regardless of who was pitching, I was going to be a competitive at-bat. I was going to be a tough out. That’s the main thing you can do as a hitter is keep being consistent. So, that’s what I’m going to continue to do.”

Finally on top of his shoulder issue, Biggio plans to spend the final two weeks of spring training advancing a mid-May swing adjustment he believes helped unlock him at the plate. Over those rough first six weeks last season — in which he hit .127/.191/.238 across 68 plate appearances — Biggio found he was often flying open and pulling off the ball in his swing. Searching for answers in the batting cages, he remembered a thought Blue Jays special adviser Victor Martinez put in his head during spring training: “Swing down with your hands.”

It sounds a little counterintuitive. But the idea is that cue will keep Biggio closed, limit how much his lower half moves as he swings, and let his hands do the work. Once the adjustment took, Biggio experienced a noticeable difference — he felt a lot quicker to the ball and capable of getting his bat to pitches in parts of the strike zone that were giving him trouble.

“I just changed the thought process in my swing,” Biggio said. “The first time that I worked on it was in spring training. And I just put it in my back pocket and didn’t think about it a whole lot, only worked on it a little bit. But once I really needed to make an adjustment based off of my first month, which was not very productive, I just said, ‘What’s there to lose?’”

The turning point was this plate appearance on May 24, when Biggio came off the bench and ambushed the first pitch he saw from Rays leverage reliever Jason Adam:

That was one of only seven home runs Adam allowed all season; his 2.22 ERA over the last two years is the 12th lowest of 150 qualified MLB relievers. Not an easy guy to get, especially with your first swing of the game entering cold as a pinch-hitter.

A day after the homer off Adam, Biggio drove a 102-m.p.h base hit to right off Zach Eflin. And in his next appearance, two days later in Minnesota, he tied a game with a 396-foot shot off a two-strike Pablo Lopez curveball, one of only three homers the Twins all-star allowed on that pitch all season.

The swing change, and the results it helped support, also impacted the way Biggio was being pitched. Earlier in the season, Biggio was seeing a steady diet of elevated fastballs. But after his adjustment, he started doing more damage on those pitches. So, the league adjusted, throwing him more spin and off-speed down in the zone.

An early August homer in Cleveland off Enyel De Los Santos is a good example. The Guardians right-hander predominantly throws fastballs (61 per cent usage) and sliders (30 per cent). He does mix in the occasional changeup to lefties like Biggio, but it’s still a pitch De Los Santos uses less than a fifth of the time against that side of the platoon.

And yet, perhaps in response to Biggio’s scouting report coming in, De Los Santos threw the Blue Jays infielder three straight changeups in his first career plate appearance against him. Biggio hit the final one over the right-field wall to give the Blue Jays a late lead.

Facing De Los Santos again two days later, Biggio saw a barrage of fastballs and made another adjustment, taking an 0-2, outer-third heater the other way for a leadoff single.

Little cat-and-mouse battles like these are constantly occurring beneath the surface of games you watch nightly throughout summer. Pitchers figure out a way a hitter’s having success and counter it. Hitters notice how pitchers are approaching them and start anticipating. Biggio feels it’s an area of his approach that he’s improved over time.

“This is a game of adjustments — I really recognized it as soon as I got called to the big-leagues. Everyone was throwing me inside. Then I’d hit a home run, and now they’re going away. You really have to learn how to battle with what your scouting report is,” he says. “The more areas you can cover, the more pitches you can cover, the tougher an out you’re going to be. And the tougher to gameplan for you’re going to be. So, overall, I’m trying to force pitchers into the zone. Trying to force them to where I want them to be. But, at the end of the day, you just have to compete.”

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By his own admission, Biggio is a hitter who prides himself on being able to get to pitches all over the zone but lost his feel for that approach in 2022 and early 2023. So, he adjusted. The results over the final four months of the season speak for themselves. And by the mid-September stretch run, he’d become an every-day player.

The question now is whether he can carry that performance over a trying off-season and prove his expanded role ought to persist. Throughout a frustrating beginning to his spring, with more time spent in trainer’s rooms than batter’s boxes, that was difficult to demonstrate. Now, finally back in games, continuing to refine his approach on the most valuable training grounds of all, Biggio is eager to continue pushing things forward.

“I think there’s so much value in just going out there and competing,” he says. “You can work as hard as you want to work. Whether that’s defensively or offensively. But when the lights turn on, you have what you have. And you’ve just got to do your best with it.”