“Deep Left Field” podcast

Don’t look now, but there’s a familiar name working its way up the Blue Jays’ leaderboard.

Cavan Biggio is back, and he has stealthily been one of the Jays’ best hitters since returning from a bout with COVID-19 earlier this season.

The 27-year-old Texan became the primary target of Jays fans’ frustrations during a lost season in 2021 — there’s one every year — but, working almost exclusively out of the ninth spot in the batting order, he has quietly returned to the form that made him one of the key cogs in the Jays’ lineup two years ago.

Biggio was the team’s primary lead off hitter in the pandemic shortened 2020 season. He started the year batting second, but flipflopped with Bo Bichette 10 games in and stayed there the rest of the way, except for one weird Friday night in Tampa Bay when the Jays got way too cute and hit him eighth.

His major strengths — elite knowledge of the strike zone and plate discipline — made him the ideal candidate to set the table for the Jays’ big bats in the days before George Springer and Marcus Semien, and the left-handed swinger was terrific, leading the team with a .375 on-base percentage.

He’s still setting the table, just from the bottom of the order.

“(Biggio) hitting ninth is perfect,” said Jays manager Charlie Montoyo, who has put Biggio’s name on his lineup card 28 times in the 38 games since the team’s Swiss Army knife returned from Buffalo at the end of May. “He gets (us) to Springer and Bo again because he gets on base.”

He sure does. Since his return from Triple-A, Biggio had posted a .422 on-base percentage entering Tuesday. To put that into perspective, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. led the American League last season with a .401 on-base percentage.

It’s not just the walks. Going into Tuesday’s game in Oakland, Biggio has hit .284 since his return, with a robust .489 slugging percentage.

In the month of June, Biggio posted an on-base-plus-slugging percentage of .944. Only Alejandro Kirk’s 1.086 mark was better among Blue Jays.

This offensive resurgence comes after a 2021 season spent dealing with injuries, first to his fingers and hand, then later to his neck and back and, finally, his elbow.

“It was definitely very challenging, to say the least,” said Biggio, who posted career lows in almost every offensive category last season.

A shift to third base, a position he had only played 10 times in the majors and very sporadically in the minor leagues, added to that challenge. By the metrics and by the eye test, he was a below-average third baseman but, thanks to the acquisition of Matt Chapman over the offseason, he doesn’t have to worry about the hot corner anymore. He has made starts at first base, second base, left field and right field, with Santiago Espinal shifting over to third when Chapman gets a day off.

“By the time this (season) is over, he’s going to end up playing centre, too,” said Montoyo.

The ugliness of last year carried over, as Biggio began this season still dealing with the after-effects of his elbow injury. He lost the second-base job to Espinal after the first weekend and when he came down with COVID in late April, he was hitting just .043 (1-for-23), with no extra-base hits.

After he recovered from the virus, Biggio was sent to Buffalo on a rehab assignment, but when his rehab time was over, he didn’t come right back to the big leagues, staying in Triple-A for an extra 10 days.

Since his return, the numbers have spoken for themselves, with Biggio slotting in defensively wherever he’s needed for another one of the regulars to get a day off his feet.

“You don’t really miss the other guy,” said Montoyo, “because he does such a good job wherever you put him.”

His return to being the hitter he has always been, when healthy, has even made Biggio the Jays’ primary replacement in the leadoff spot on the days that Springer doesn’t play. He’s made three starts up top over the past two weeks. And he hit fifth for the first time in over a year Tuesday night.

Looking back at what he had to deal with last season — he was probably only truly healthy for about three weeks — Biggio believes there were some important lessons learned.

“This game is not going to feel bad for you,” he said. “This game doesn’t owe you anything, that’s the way I always looked at it. I never felt bad for myself. I look at last year as one of the most important years of my career, just in the aspect of I learned so much. It was the first year where pretty much nothing went my way.”

The last six weeks have shown that, right now, things are definitely going Biggio’s way, and he is once again a big part of a good ball club.