DUNEDIN, Fla. -- George Springer represents everything that went right a year ago.
The team that exceeded every expectation was led by an aging outfielder who exceeded all of his. Springer was the heart and soul of the 2025 Blue Jays, but even that doesn’t quite capture it. Without Springer, we could be talking about another missed opportunity, maybe another talented team that crashed and burned in the Wild Card round. Instead, Springer willed the Blue Jays to greatness.
Time moves on, though, and this game is so demanding. With everything reset to zero in mid-February, the Blue Jays need Springer to repeat the season that shocked the sport.
In 2024, it looked like Springer’s great career was careening toward its end. He’d hit .220 with a .674 OPS, lost the leadoff job that had been his primary home for roughly a decade and lacked all of the explosiveness that had made him one of the game’s premier talents.
Then, so suddenly, it all came rushing back. Springer launched 32 home runs with a .959 OPS a year ago. He didn’t just look like the best player on the diamond, he looked energized. He looked like the big kid again, the one who manager John Schneider joked he “needs to keep a leash on” in Spring Training on Tuesday because he doesn’t have an off switch.
“Things happen at different points in guys’ careers,” Schneider said. “George’s track record speaks for itself, but I think he understands where he is with his swing and with his body right now. Man, I wouldn’t put anything past George. To see what he did last year is evidence of that.”
Schneider was proven right in 2025. Throughout the year prior, he’d stood by Springer, often taking criticism for how firmly he’d planted both feet in the ground. Schneider refused to give up on Springer, though, and Springer refused to fade into the autumn of his career. That ‘25 run was such a gift, the perfect player with the perfect season at the perfect time.
Whether Springer can run it back will be for the coming weeks and months to tell, but even a minor regression would still give the Blue Jays a productive DH and part-time outfielder. Much of Springer’s value comes in the clubhouse, too, where the former World Series MVP -- and author of one of the greatest moments in Blue Jays history with his home run in Game 7 of the ALCS -- has been there, done that.
“You have to understand that you can achieve it,” Springer said. “You have to understand that it’s a long year and we played until the last possible day you can possibly play to, so you’ve got to get your body right, get your mind right and understand what you did that year, good and bad. You start fresh from there.”
It’s addicting. When you’ve played on stages like that, nothing else compares.
“Everybody got a taste of where you want to go,” Springer said. “Everybody understands what it takes to get there now and what it takes to play that long. A lot has to go right. I think guys understand what they’ve got to do now at the clubhouse and at home to prepare themselves to play.”
That’s been echoed throughout the Blue Jays’ clubhouse. Schneider’s message to the club this spring is that they aren’t defending anything and aren’t owed anything. They’re starting from zero again, just like they were a year ago. The expectations have changed, but the motivations can’t.
Springer has been chasing that high since 2017, when he starred with the Astros. Everyone in the clubhouse sees how much it means to him, and now that they’ve stood just inches from history themselves, they understand it.
“You crave the World Series, and you crave the playoffs after you get a taste of it,” said Ernie Clement. “We just have a great group. I think we’re going to be really, really good. There’s a lot to look forward to.”
Springer is now in the final season of his six-year, $150 million deal. That deal paid for itself with one swing in the ALCS, of course, but that contract has always represented a new era of Blue Jays baseball, going back to when Springer was brought in to pair alongside Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette.
The names and faces have changed around Springer, but he has one more shot, at the very least. It feels like anything is possible for Springer again, and if that’s true, anything is possible for the Blue Jays.