A hitting coach who isn’t well-known outside of baseball has led the Toronto Blue Jays to their first World Series appearance in 32 years by making one of the most surprising changes to their offense in recent postseason history. Now, as the team gets ready to play the defending champion, the coach’s methods are being scrutinized more than ever before. Not all of baseball’s best are sure that they work.

The plan is all about one thing: Bat speed. David Popkins, the Blue Jays’ hitting coach, noticed that Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the team’s $500 million star player, was having trouble with his timing after the team lost the first two games of the ALCS to the Seattle Mariners. Guerrero was hitting the ball only a few inches in front of his body, which turned line drives into grounders. So, Popkins put Guerrero in the cage so that Vladdy could work on hitting curveballs.

“It slows him down,” Popkins explained. “Let’s help him get a little confidence in his path.” The change came before an amazing turnaround, with Guerrero hitting .526/.609/1.158 over the last five games to win the ALCS MVP award. The team, which had the sixth-fastest bat speed improvement from the previous season, won the game in Seattle. But Brent Rooker, who won the 2024 Silver Slugger Award and just signed a five-year, $60 million extension with the Oakland Athletics, strongly disagrees with this approach.

“The fact that the idea of ‘swinging the bat faster is better’ is considered new age analytical thinking is insane,” Rooker stated on social media. He explained that speed, power, and force production have always set elite athletes apart in all sports. Rooker even pointed out whether the Blue Jays’ approach is really new or just a new way of packaging old ideas.

Rooker’s criticism goes beyond just rejecting the method. He also noted that just speeding up the bat doesn’t mean success.

“Skill, mental makeup, competitive edge, preparation, and a thousand other things all play a massive part in overall success,” he wrote on X. While the Blue Jays’ approach has some merit, saying that their postseason run was all about bat speed acceleration is too simple for the many factors that affect performance at baseball’s highest level.

The World Series matchup is a quick test of two unique ways of thinking.

As the defending champions, the Dodgers have a history of winning and a deep roster.

And the Blue Jays were 19–33 when Guerrero didn’t get a hit during the regular season, but they showed strength by coming back from a two-game ALCS deficit to move on. For Toronto to win, they need more than just good bat speed. They need to turn minor improvements into big performances when the pressure is on.

But Toronto’s hope is complicated by history. The teams have already played each other this season, and the results are a painful reminder of the challenge ahead.

Blue Jays’ troubles against Los Angeles

To win the championship, the Toronto Blue Jays will have to beat a team with whom they already have a bad history.

The Dodgers won all three games they played against the Blue Jays in Los Angeles in August, scoring 18 runs to 7. Toronto’s lone victory in August (5-4) required ninth-inning heroics from Mason Fluharty against Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts (Jays vs Dodgers 10 Aug).

Guerrero’s timing problems in the August series were similar to those he had throughout the season, which highlighted the team’s weaknesses at its core. The hitters on the team kept failing against fastballs with great command and breaking balls with accuracy.

Different paths come together in Los Angeles. The Dodgers went through the playoffs with ruthless accuracy, beating Cincinnati in two games, Philadelphia in four NLDS games, thanks to reliever Orion Kerkeling’s costly mistake, and Milwaukee in three games. Ohtani had an amazing Game 4 that ended the series.

Meanwhile, Toronto’s journey required survival skills.

The Blue Jays barely made it past the Yankees in the head-to-head tiebreaker, beating New York 34–19 in four ALDS games. After that, they fought Seattle through seven exciting ALCS games. Eugenio Suárez’s grand slam in the eighth inning of Game 5 put their season in danger, but George Springer’s three-run homer in the seventh inning of Game 7 made sure they advance.

In a nutshell, Los Angeles comes as a well-oiled machine. But Toronto comes as a fighter, toughened by hard times. The Dodgers’ smooth dominance is quite different from Toronto’s ability to persevere through tough times in October. A few hours wait and we will start getting glimpses of the coming week…