The rejuvenation of George Springer: How Blue Jays veteran got conviction back as he swings for another title

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TORONTO — George Springer steps to the plate in the final game of the regular season at the Rogers Centre. Right foot first, then left. He taps the plate with the tip of his bat. Takes a deep breath.

Springer feels it again. It swells from within. It sits on his shoulders. Runs through his hands. It’s not a sensation, but the absence of one. A tangible calm. For a time, he thought he lost it. Age, the relentless failure of baseball, his own inner dialogue, they conspired to rob him of perhaps his greatest strength. But as he digs his cleats into the dirt and stares at the mound, he believes it’s back.

Conviction. 

“I essentially got away from me being who I was,” Springer said, “and what kind of made me successful.”

It’s always been his secret sauce. The permission for his uncanny aggression. Confidence is one thing, a belief in what’s possible. Springer, who turned 36 two weeks ago, has always known what he can do. But conviction is a different animal, the assurance that he will. No matter how much he fails, his certainty never wavered. 

Until it did. Two down seasons made it seem like Springer’s best days were behind him.

In 2025, the conviction returned. On this 2-1 slider from Rays righty Bryan Baker, Springer swung like failure wasn’t possible. 

The result didn’t match his certitude. But because he’s free again to play with his reckless abandon, the results have come. So will some down-ballot MVP votes.

A .309 average. A .399 on-base percentage. A .560 slug. A .959 OPS. And then the kicker: 32 homers. His best season since 2019, when he was 29 with the Astros and viewed as the club’s most talented player.

“I feel like it is rare,” Alex Bregman, his former Astros teammate, said. “I don’t feel like a lot of guys can have over a .400 on-base and .500 slug in the big leagues.”

But this isn’t just about the results. Or him leading the Blue Jays to first place in the American League East, fighting off the Yankees who were biting at the club’s heels until the last pitch of the season Sunday. 

It’s about the conviction, returning to that old Springer endowed with doubt repellent. Swing hard. Live with the miss. Fall down if necessary. He does at least once a game. Barrel flying. First pitch on the way, Springer’s locked in on it. 

“He rather go 0-and-1 vs. 0-for-1,” said teammate Ernie Clement.

He much rather swing hard and miss than swing soft and ground out. 

He was raised in movement. A gymnast growing up, like his mom, Laura, who competed at UConn. The son of a football player. His dad, George Jr., played on the gridiron there, too. In both sports, hesitation is costly. If you’re not committed to making a tackle or performing a move, you’ll get hurt.

That conviction presented itself in college. Red Sox hitting coach Pete Fatse saw it before Springer even stepped foot on campus at his parents’ alma mater. He was Springer’s host during his official visit. UConn was — and still is — a basketball school. Not known for baseball. Yet Springer, a Connecticut native, was adamant about staying home. 

“He was always a guy that got his A swing off,” Fatse said. “I remember hearing a lot of stories about him. He was drafted by the Twins out of high school and was highly recruited. The fact that he wanted to stay in Connecticut, and be a part of the program, I felt was like it was a testament to where we got the program at that point. He changed the program forever. That class.” 

In 2011, Springer led the Huskies to their first ever Super Regionals in the NCAA Tournament.

That refusal to hesitate carried into his professional life. He was supposed to break camp with the Astros in 2013. They even dangled a big-league contract — the first of its kind. But it was a low-ball offer. His father stepped in. Told him he couldn’t sign that. Told him to bet on himself.

So the Astros cut him at the end of camp. Sent him to Double-A. He tore up Double-A pitching. Got bumped to Triple-A. Tore that up, too.

Across both stops the numbers looked like a video game: .303/.411/.600 with a 1.010 OPS. He hit 37 homers and stole 45 bases

Yet Springer lost some of that last year, his age-34 season. For the first time in his career — maybe his life — he grew passive.

Failure crept in. Survival mode as a result of it took over. Springer’s swings weren’t the same. 

“Hitting is contagious,” Blue Jays hitting coach David Popkins said. “When it’s going good, it’s contagious, and when it’s going bad, it’s contagious, too. So when everyone’s kind of feeling that stress and that pressure from an, you know, an underwhelming season, guys tend to press and  start to shrink their moves.” 

He hit just .220/.303/.371 with a .674 OPS and 19 homers. His groundball rate reached 50.7%, a career high. 

Springer is confident. You have to be to play this game at his level. But there was a moment when he wondered if this was him now. That this was how it was supposed to be. Father Time. Divine order.

“It wasn’t like maybe my best days were behind me. I just think that I had convinced myself that I’m getting older,” Springer said. “When in reality that’s not the case.” 

So, during spring training Popkins pulled him into his lab. Not for some major makeover in his swing mechanics. But for his conviction. Popkins needed that version of George back. 

“I remember during the spring [the hitting group] asked me ‘Where’d your aggression go? It seems like you’re just trying to hit it,'” Springer recalled. 

“Be violent,” Popkins told him. 

They reframed his mindset. Unbeknownst to him, he didn’t think anything really changed until they showed him the data.

“I know who I am. This is what I do,” Springer said. “But then I gotta realize, like, I might have been extremely defensive. And, you know, I think it’s human nature. When you’re trying to find things and trying to work through things, you know, find things, to work all that stuff out.” 

Of course, swinging hard wasn’t the only finding. Springer, judging from the eye test, got more into his legs. He was more upright in 2024. Much like right here. 

That pitch was middle-middle. One Springer typically feasts on. But instead, you can see him fighting his swing, and was handcuffed.

Now, look at this year. There’s more bend in his knees. His “nose” as hitting coaches like to say, is more into the baseball. The movements are quieter. More connected. That can combat age, to some extent. At least for the really good ones.

Conviction. 

When the mind feels it, the body follows. The swing falls in line. Everything moves in unison. Last year, it didn’t look like that. It looked like Springer might have been finished. The mileage from the years of hard-nose play that is rare for a player of his caliber appeared as if it had caught up to him. But his conviction was restored. 

This is who he is. When he strikes out badly, he hits a homer in his next at-bat. When he swings and misses violently with all eyes on him, he dusts himself off and ropes a double down the line. 

“He’s always been able to do that,” Springer’s dad told CBS Sports. “One of the things that I spent a lot of time telling him when he was younger, is talking about how this is a game of failure. You’ve got to have short term memory. 

“But saying that and then having a young player actually do it, they’re two different things.There is something unique about him that has given him that capacity to do that, and I wish I could give you a better answer.” 

Here’s one of the answers. Springer’s season has shifted the tectonic plates — from a team written off after years of failure and untapped promise to the deliverers of an AL East crown. 

Even as the Yankees made that final push, it was Springer — the leader of the club, the 2017 World Series winner who has been here before, the slugger with 19 career postseason home runs — telling the younger group to keep at it. Stay with it. 

“It’s so rewarding,” Springer said. “Especially after what we went through last year as a team [not making the postseason] “But I think what this team has learned, man, is like, you have to go through it to succeed. And I think last year was probably one of the best things that could have ever happened to us as a group.” 

There’s no telling how much time Springer has left. Year 12. Plenty of tread worn down. His contract runs out after next season, when he’ll be 37. His dad doesn’t know when it might end, so he shows up more now. Mom does too. Springer’s a father, a husband, with life pulling in every direction.

But in this moment, in this season, he’s found a way to outrun the clock. His team will face the Yankees in the ALDS beginning Saturday.

Springer will be there, that old feeling washing over him. The one he had to fight to get back. He’ll feel it in his shoulders again. In his hands. In the calm. Swinging hard. Running fast. Withholding nothing. Not just believing he can produce, but certain he will. 

This news was originally published on this post .

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