David Perron heating up for Senators after a wild ride on and off the ice

Ottawa Senators winger David Perron and his wife have learned more about the priorities of family and hockey over the past eight months than they care to know. Wayne Scanlan checks in on their life-altering story.

TORONTO — David Popkins can pinpoint the exact moment when the light bulb went off for Andrés Giménez. 

The Toronto Blue Jays hitting coach had been engaged in conversations with Gimenez about his swing mechanics ever since the club acquired the second baseman in the off-season. 

They’d worked on having Giménez add a leg kick, something that he had used in the past, but the change just didn’t feel seamless to the left-handed hitter during the early days of spring training. He didn’t want to stray too far from the toe-tap that he’d used across the past three seasons. 

Popkins felt Giménez could use some convincing and so that’s when he pulled his ace card.

On March 3, when the Blue Jays were visiting the Detroit Tigers for a Grapefruit League game in Lakeland, Fla., Popkins showed Giménez a video from 2021. It featured the infielder playing for the Guardians’ triple-A affiliate and, at the plate, he sported an open stance with a big coil of his front leg — something Giménez picked up while with the New York Mets in 2020 and carried with him after he was traded to Cleveland.  

Back then, Giménez produced some serious exit velocity and the Blue Jays coach assured him that it hadn’t vanished. He simply needed to unearth it. 

So, Giménez decided to finally reinstate the leg kick to his swing. 

“It was instant,” Popkins recalls. “That day, he hit (batting practice) and it looked like he was swinging at 50 per cent and he was hitting balls out. And he was like, ‘I like that feeling.’”

That carried right into the game as Giménez blasted a 107.2-m.p.h triple to right-centre field and added a 99.6-m.p.h. double to the left-centre gap. 

“He was like, ‘Yeah, this feels really good,’” says Popkins. “And from there, he just took off.”

Giménez has indeed taken off. The 26-year-old has opened the season as the Blue Jays’ most productive hitter, launching three of the team’s five home runs while posting a 1.131 OPS across the first seven games. He’s batted in the No. 4 spot in each of those contests and while his five-foot-11, 161-pound frame doesn’t scream cleanup hitter, the results are undeniable.  

“It doesn’t surprise us,” Jays manager John Schneider said recently. “Probably surprises a lot of people, but it doesn’t surprise us.”

Popkins, hired by the Blue Jays this off-season, was familiar with Giménez before the two arrived in the Blue Jays organization. During his time as hitting coach for the Minnesota Twins, Popkins had a front-row seat to Giménez’s at-bats for the division-rival Guardians and took note of a player who oozed potential. 

“He would occasionally get off a swing and you’re like, ‘What is that? That looks incredible,’” says Popkins. “So dynamic. So athletic. And then, as I kept seeing him, the moves got a little bit tighter and smaller and more rigid. And he’d really started to cap his athleticism in the box.”

After the Blue Jays acquired Giménez in th