Davis Schneider Is Entering a Pivotal Year on the Blue Jays

For 35 games in the second-half of the 2023 season, few players were hitting the baseball quite like Davis Schneider of the Toronto Blue Jays. He hit an epic home run his first big league at-bat before posting the highest OPS through a player’s first 25 games in MLB history, and wound up finishing high up on a number of AL leaderboards down the stretch.

From Aug. 4 to the end of the regular season, Schneider finished third in the AL (min. 120 PA) in ISO and wRC+, fourth in SLG, sixth in OBP, eighth in BB%, 12th in BABIP, and his 1.9 fWAR was 13th in the league. His WAR total was higher than the likes of Kyle Tucker, Teoscar Hernandez, Rafael Devers, DJ LeMahieu, and Jose Ramirez.

It was such a small sample size, but Schneider’s presence took the team by storm. At multiple points he looked like he could be well on his way to becoming the next big thing in Toronto.

He coasted his way on to the 2024 Opening Day roster, but the wheels fell off and Schneider’s output dipped in basically every facet. As we creep towards the regular season of the 2025 campaign, he’s facing a pivotal stretch of games as he looks to prove he belongs not only on the Blue Jays, but in the big leagues in general.

Let’s take a look at how we got here, and why there could still be some hope for the 26-year-old with one of the game’s best mustaches.

The Back Story

For those that are unfamiliar, Schneider has an outstanding story of how he got to where he is today. Initially, he joined the Blue Jays as a 28th-round pick in the 2017 MLB Draft. To put that further into perspective, the 28th round doesn’t even exist in today’s iteration of the draft.

I had the privilege of speaking to Mike Alberts, a long-time scout for the Blue Jays that was ultimately responsible for the organization drafting Schneider, at the time of his first promotion to the big leagues. Alberts told me a story about how he visited the Schneider family home and told Davis that the Blue Jays were interested in him, but he may not be selected in a high round or get as much money as he’d initially hoped for.

Schneider’s response was simply, “no matter where you take me, I intend to sign”, and that’s something that’s stuck with me on Davis Schneider the person ever since. Alberts couldn’t stress enough how obsessed with playing baseball Schneider was, and that he was going to go pro regardless of how much or how little money he signed for off the bat.

Standing at just 5-foot-9 and largely coming up through the minor leagues without a position to play on defense, the odds have always been stacked against Schneider. It took until 2022 – his fifth season in pro ball – for things to start clicking. Then, his 87-game showing in 2023 is where his name truly began to gain some steam, and eventually a promotion to the promised land.

In the minors that year, he hit 21 doubles and home runs, driving in 64 and posting a .969 OPS. He received looks at first, second, and third base while also logging some time in left field. The Blue Jays tried hard to get him comfortable at multiple positions so he’d have a place to play if/when he made it to The Show.

The Blue Jays, desperate for an injection of life to their lineup, called Schneider up in August and he immediately proved that they made the right choice sticking with him for so long in the minor leagues. He was taking Cy Young-caliber pitchers deep while sporting an impressive sense of pitch-recognition at the plate and looking like a much more experienced player than he was in the big leagues.

The Regression

There was never a shred of doubt that Schneider would make the 2024 Opening Day roster. Even if he wasn’t going to continue to post an OPS north of 1.000 and sport an OPS+ of 174 over the course of a full year, he had already showed enough promise to warrant a spot on the roster.

He had an OPS of .813 through the first month of the season before posting an .832 OPS through 24 games in May. Then, the wheels began to fall off.

Ask 10 people and you’ll get 10 different answers as to what exactly happened with Schneider. The most simple answer is that pitchers began to adjust to the player. He was nowhere even close to the unknown commodity he was down the stretch in 2023; by now the scouting reports on him were extensive and pitchers knew exactly how to get him out.

In 48 second-half games, he hit just .140 with 59 strikeouts and a .469 OPS. He recorded just eight extra-base hits and looked uncomfortable at the plate virtually every single time he grabbed a bat. He lost his ability to hit left-handed pitching and began to try too hard to search for hits. This led to much more strikeouts and much less quality contact.

Speaking to The Athletic in September of this past season, Schneider said, “I’ve tried it all. If you see my stances throughout these past couple of months, there’s probably not one single one that’s the same. I like to switch it up a lot, and I’m going to continue to switch it up when things aren’t feeling the right way.”

Just a few days after that, he snapped a 54-game home run drought and showed a slight glimpse of hope for the future.

The Comeback

The Blue Jays are coming off of an offseason full of disappointment and heartbreaking misses on the free-agent market. To make matters worse, they failed to sign Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to a long-term contract extension and are likely heading into their final year with both Guerrero and Bo Bichette on the roster.

There are a ton of Blue Jays that are going to have lots of eyes in the industry on them, and Schneider is one of them. He’s got just a hair over one full season’s worth of games under his belt in the big leagues, but we’ve seen some high highs and low lows out of him.

To kick off the 2025 season, the Blue Jays are sticking with their guy. Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling reported on Saturday that Schneider made the club’s Opening Day roster for the second year in a row.

Through 16 spring training games, he’s hit a pair of home runs while driving in five runs, scoring six of his own, and walking nine times versus 11 strikeouts. That walk rate is such a crucial part of his game, as he’s capable of being an on-base machine when you pair his gap power with an eye that can lead to a boatload of free passes.

His line so far his .345/.500/.655 and his OPS is up to 1.155. As we’ve seen, this is not a sustainable level of output for Schneider, but it certainly shows that the endless amount of work he’s spent in the lab has resulted in a better player.

It’s not that the Blue Jays don’t have other options they could’ve plugged into their roster instead of Schneider if they really wanted to. In fact, they are deeper in 2B/LF players than they are at any other position(s) on the organizational depth chart. A hot showing in spring has clearly shown the Blue Jays’ decision-makers that Schneider is more worthy of a roster spot (likely on the bench to start things off) over the likes of Orelvis Martinez, Leo Jimenez, and Joey Loperfido – all of whom have already been demoted to Triple-A.

Closing Thoughts

Ever since he broke into the league, Schneider has been a well-liked figure in Toronto. Followers of the Blue Jays are also familiar with his family; as his father and two sisters are all over Blue Jays Twitter. As a group, they’re fun and have been welcomed into Blue Jays Land with open arms.

It remains to be seen just how Schneider is going to be utilized by the Blue Jays in the coming season, but there’s no doubt that he’ll have a chance to earn more playing time if he can continue to rake like he has in spring.

Andres Gimenez is comfortably the club’s second baseman, and Will Wagner and Anthony Santander are the designated hitter and left fielder in the projected lineup. Schneider will have to fall into some sort of timeshare with all three of these players, but there’s a world where everyone can co-exist.

I’m not ready to say the 2025 season is a “make-or-break” one for Schneider, but it’s important that he finds his footing in regular-season games and finds a way to be a positive contributor to this club once again. He’s shown multiple times that he’s capable of this, so now it’s time for us to sit back and let him work his magic.