JJ Bleday Explains How His Swing Changes Are Paying Off In Arizona — College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects

Image credit: (Photo by Bill Mitchell)

MESA, Ariz. — Marlins outfield prospect JJ Bleday’s first full official season as a pro didn’t quite go as planned. The fourth overall pick in the 2019 draft, Bleday spent 2021 at Double-A Pensacola, where he hit .212/.323/.373 with 12 homers and 54 RBIs. This, after a debut season at High-A Jupiter in 2019 that saw him produce an OPS of just .690, five points lower than his mark this past season and certainly not what was expected out of a player whom Baseball America ranked as the sixth-best player in the class after a stellar junior year at Vanderbilt.

The one bright spot was that Bleday hadn’t lost the feel for the strike zone. In 2021, he whiffed 101 times while drawing 64 walks. Command of the strike zone has often been a harbinger of good things to come, and it served as at least one piece of positivity in Bleday’s otherwise unremarkable year.

“I’ve always had confidence in swinging at strikes and taking balls,” Bleday said. “I feel like I’ve always had good plate discipline and feel for the strike zone, and that just goes to trusting yourself and trusting where you are in the batter’s box and making sure you’re not getting out of the zone.”

So while Bleday was not chasing pitches out of the zone, he also wasn’t doing much damage on the pitches someone of his stature should hit with great authority. Over the latter half of the season Bleday worked with the Marlins’ player-development staff—including Pensacola coach Scott Seabol, hitting coordinators Edwar Gonzalez and Jeff Livesey and hitting consultant Greg Colbrunn—to dive deep into his swing and find a way to make loud contact more often.

In the early going of the Arizona Fall League, the changes Bleday made appear to be paying off. With a little more than half the season in the books, he’s gone 21-for-55 with six doubles, three home runs, 18 RBIs and 10 each of both strikeouts and walks. That line includes a massive game on Monday, when Bleday collected five hits and was a triple shy of the cycle after three innings.

Yes, the sample is small. Yes, the pitching in the Fall League is as underwhelming as it’s been in some time, what Bleday has done over the last three weeks is clearly the hottest stretch of his time as a professional and the closest he’s come to looking like the player the Marlins chose in 2019.

Before Tuesday’s game, Baseball America sat down with Bleday and asked him to compare the changes between his swing in the early portion of the regular season and what it looks like now.

Upon looking at his former stance, Bleday noticed a different hand position at address: “(My stance is) spread out and my hands are normally what I did with my hands in college. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just I’m thinking too much,” he said. “I have a lot more head movement, and I’m still sinking into the ground, too. (Ideally) I want to be upright so I can naturally get into my hips. Right there, it’s spread out in my quads. I don’t want to be in my quads.”

The swing itself is not bad. He’s maybe a little late—which can be excused because he was facing Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo in the early-season clips—but overall not a bad pass. Still, there’s things that needed to be improved.

“Right there I stay inside the baseball pretty well. I’m a little late though,” he said. “I’m probably late because it’s hard for me to get on time with my lower half. It’s not actively engaged and ready to hit whoever that was with the high heater.”

After that, we moved on to what Bleday’s swing looks like now, as he dominates for the Mesa Solar Sox. Immediately, he noticed a difference in the way he stands in the batter’s box.

“Look at the posture. The posture’s right. The head movement’s very little,” he said. “And it’s just very easy to replicate my swing this way.”

Once he follows through with the swing, Bleday makes big-time impact—which he hadn’t done for most of the season—and launches his third home run of the AFL.

“It’s just hard to replicate that every single pitch. . . . Guys have so much movement nowadays,” Bleday said. “It’s just hard to be that short, compact and precise.”

Now that Bleday has his swing where he wants it, it’s a matter of doing it again and again and again until the swing—and the results it’s produced so far in the Fall League—become the norm.