Toronto Blue Jays Hitting Coach David Popkins: Baseball America’s 2025 MLB Coach Of The Year

Image credit: David Popkins (right) (Photo by Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

During his playing days as a switch-hitting outfielder, David Popkins described his pursuit of the perfect swing as his holy grail. 

In college at UC Davis, that meant trying to copy his lefthanded swing on the right side. In the Cardinals’ system, after signing as an undrafted free agent, that meant trying to replicate his righthanded swing as a lefty. 

Popkins’ inability to do it led to an epiphany that underpins his coaching career: If he couldn’t recreate the same feel and movements in his own body, then emphasizing the same physical principles to players across the board didn’t make sense, either.

“That’s what really set off in my brain that, man, everyone is doing it wrong,” Popkins said. “Teaching one pattern that fits one guy to everyone only solves a small percentage of people who fall into that category. 

“But if you really identify what the true issue is and you take a little bit from everywhere, that just gives you this cabinet of solutions that you’re able to help more people, and someone doesn’t feel messed up because they didn’t get your swing style.

“Nothing’s wrong with them. They just haven’t got the right information yet.”

Popkins brought that approach to the Blue Jays in 2025, and the transformational results made him the Major League Coach of the Year. 

Along with new assistant Lou Iannotti and incumbent Hunter Mense—whom the Giants hired as hitting coach in November—the 36-year-old Popkins helped push an offense that ranked 23rd in runs scored in 2024 up to fourth in 2025, with largely the same personnel.

Blue Jays across the roster praised his work, be it players rebounding from down seasons, such as George Springer, Bo Bichette, Alejandro Kirk, Daulton Varsho and Myles Straw, or players at various stages of establishing themselves in the majors, such as Ernie Clement, Addison Barger and Nathan Lukes.

While Popkins also worked with the club’s biomechanics department on a motion-capture process and reporting tool—something he had helped develop with the Twins at his previous stop—his individualized approach with players was most pivotal.

In studying the physical commonalities for each player when they’re swinging at their best, Popkins managed to give them case-specific diagnoses, something he feels is “liberating as a player, when you know nothing is actually messed up.”

“That’s the part that drives me to help each guy,” he said, “because I want each guy to feel like there is something for you. We just have to find it. We have to just solve your puzzle, and your puzzle is going to be different than his puzzle.”

Barger, with his big leg kick and high-torque swing, is particularly reflective of Popkins’ approach. After initial struggle during his 2024 MLB debut season, the hard-hitting 26-year-old made adjustments late that summer. He moved to a wider stance while scaling back his leg kick. 

This spring, at Popkins’ urging, Barger worked his way back to his original move, something he called “a breath of fresh air, because it’s hard to always fight against how you want to move naturally . . . 

“It’s not like I want to hit like that. It’s just the way I’ve always moved, so it’s instinctual.”

Barger ended up batting .243/.301/.454 with 21 home runs, providing a crucial boost when the Blue Jays desperately needed one. He started all seven games of the World Series.

Popkins remembers watching video of Barger and thinking, “Oh my gosh, this kid can absolutely swing the bat, and the production wasn’t lining up with the actual swing.” 

He thought the same about so many other Blue Jays hitters, too. “So it felt like, ‘Hey, if we go in and our group does our job, there’s some really good stuff that can happen with this offense.’

“It was one of those rare instances where exactly what you envision—the best-case scenario of what it would be like—was exactly how it was,” Popkins said. 

“I always thought (the Blue Jays) absolutely raked … There was just a fearless group that knew how to hit. And it had just seemed they had lost their identity a little bit and kind of went too far into one direction, and you didn’t see the same swagger that I was accustomed to seeing from the outside. 

“So the whole goal was to bring back that exciting, that exhilarating, that creative, that special offense that this organization has had.”