Blue Jays' Cavan Biggio showing signs of life after dismal start

Cavan Biggio entered Sunday hitting .172/.252/.323, but played the unlikely hero with a three-run home run that put the Toronto Blue Jays over the top in a comeback 7-6 win over the Minnesota Twins.

Not only was it a surprise to see Biggio deliver such an important knock, the hit itself was eyebrow-raising as it travelled 423 feet to right-centre field.

That made it the second-longest hit of Biggio's career — and a rare home run for him considering most of his round trippers are yanked down the right-field line.

While Biggio can't be expected to display this kind of power consistently, Sunday's timely home run was indicative of a positive trend in his production. Although the 28-year-old got off to a rough start to his 2023 campaign, he's been contributing a great deal at the plate since then.

We're dealing with small samples here, as each of those splits represents approximately 50 plate appearances. That means plenty of caution is warranted when drawing firm conclusions, but there are clues that Biggio is onto something lately.

For instance, since the beginning of May (58 plate appearances) the utility man has two batted balls hit at 109 mph or harder. In his previous 1342 trips to the dish, he had just one.

Sunday's home run was the second-longest home run of his career, and he also hit his third-longest homer on May 24.

In his 25 appearances since May 1, Biggio's Statcast numbers also tell the story of a player who's putting good wood on the ball.

Here's a summary of how he's hit the ball lately, with the Blue Jay whose numbers most closely resemble Biggio's, for a frame of reference:

Again, we're looking at a brief sample, but it's still notable for a guy who wasn't had even a short stretch with significantly above-average expected numbers since last July.

One possible explanation for this strong stretch is that Biggio is doing a better job of pulling the ball. Because he lacks elite power, his best chance of putting a charge into the ball is meeting it out in front of the plate and driving it right field.

In his career, 71.4% of his home runs have gone to the pull side. Even if he hits the occasional bomb like he did on Sunday, his power production is still most likely to come from balls down the right-field line.

To that end, Biggio has pulled the ball at an extremely high rate lately (58.8%), one of the highest rates he's ever produced in a 25-game stretch.

While all of this is encouraging for Biggio, there are still some red flags here. He is posting the highest strikeout rate of his career in 2023 (34.6%), and it hasn't been significantly better since the beginning of May (31.9%).

His walk rate has similarly been worse than ever this year. While it's rebounded slightly in recent weeks, he still has a long way to go before he reaches his career norms.

We're not looking a situation where Biggio is a rocket ship about to take off.

Even during his recent hot streak his 120 wRC+ is more good than great. That said, this is a player who was hurting his team not long ago and now he's hitting the ball in a way that has to be encouraging for the Blue Jays.

Sunday's home run was a hit Toronto absolutely needed, but it was also a demonstration of what's been going with Biggio for a few weeks now.