Off The Schneid

How a Davis Schneider's 0-for-32 streak became my winter survival guide

Hi everybody and a very pleasant morning to you, wherever you may be.

Have you ever felt like you were smack dab in the middle of an 0-for-37 slump where nothing you did felt like it was going to squeak through the infield for a base-hit? Where it felt like you were never going to hit the ball to the outfield again let alone hit a homerun? Well, that’s how I’ve felt the past few weeks with my writing.

It’s been 64 days now since the World Series ended. I can still transport myself back to the moment when they were just two outs away from winning it all, my son in my arms, pacing my living room, my heart ready to explode out of my chest. Then I think about Miguel Rojas and the rest of the pain of that game that lives in my chest like a bruise that I will press on for the rest of my life.

The Blue Jays have made some key signings with Dylan Cease being added to the rotation, reigning KBO MVP Cody Ponce added to the pitching staff and adding Chase Lee and Tyler Rogers added to the back end of the bullpen. They’ve made a splash signing Japanese sensation Kazuma Okamoto and to be honest, it’s been a productive offseason so far despite the fact that we’re still waiting for them to make a move on Bo Bichette.

Typically, I’d be thrilled with all the signings but for some reason I can’t seem to shake, I haven’t been able to jump off the couch in excitement like I have in years’ past about offseason moves. I don’t think it’s just sadness about them being the World Series runner-ups, I know that is something I will never get over for as long as I live. They could go win the World Series next season and I’ll be sitting here thinking “so this could have been back-to-back titles eh?”

It’s funny that the clocks were rolled back an hour and daylight savings time happened to be the same night as the end of the baseball season in 2025. As the famous quote goes

“Baseball breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring when everything else begins again and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”

I have really been feeling this one over the last month or so. We spent 28 days in October full of hope and energy and it feels like it’s going to take me 28 years to recharge my battery (okay, I’m probably being dramatic…). The sun starts setting at 3:30pm every day and it feels like the only thing I want to do these days is take a nap.

The January Weight

And I’m sure I am not the only one. It’s January 5th and I’m sure many people around the globe are trudging back into the office or to our laptops, going to bed with a sense of the Sunday scaries and waking up with existential dread after having some time off work these past two weeks.

Sometimes, it just feels like you’re in a slump and that’s where I am right now. This is a reminder that slumps happen to everyone, me, you, even professional athletes being paid 10 times your salary go through the slumps of life; it’s just a part of being human.

On The Schneid

From the end of 2024 to the beginning of 2025, Davis Schneider endured 38 straight plate appearances where he did not record a hit. During that stretch, he went 0-for-32 with five walks, a hit-by pitch, 17 strikeouts and grounded into a double play for good measure. I can’t even imagine the mental weight of going 14 straight major league games without a hit, let alone having a hitless streak crossover into the next season, but that’s what happened to him.

And yet he kept showing up. Day after day. Plate appearance after plate appearance, hoping to bloop a single into the outfield.

I wonder what Davis Schneider was thinking On April 13, 2025 in a game against the Baltimore Orioles as he stepped up to the plate, 0-for his last 32. Was he still believing he was going to get a hit? Was he going through the motions, the weight of the world on his shoulders, feeling like “here we go again…”? Did he feel like stepping out of the batter’s box and going to take a five-hour nap?

Schneider hit a single to left field in the top of the third inning that day and wound up scoring on a Vladimir Guerrero Jr base-hit later in the inning. The weight was lifted and paved the way for him to put together a fantastic season, capping it off with a homerun to leadoff Game Five of the World Series, a moment he will most certainly tell his grandchildren about. Schneider went from having a slump bleed from one season into the next to having a moment he will remember for as long as he lives. How cool is that?

The thing about slumps—whether you’re standing in the batter’s box or sitting at your desk staring at a blank page, trying to figure out what to write about in the dark days of winter—is that they make you question everything. Am I still good at this? Did I ever know what I was doing? Will I ever feel that spark again? Schneider must have asked himself these questions during those 38 plate appearances. I know I’ve been asking them during these 64 days.

When I looked at Davis Schneider’s slump, it taught me that the answer isn’t found in the questioning. It’s found in the showing up.

Fight For Every Inch

Despite all the cloudy feelings swirling inside of me this past month, I’m still choosing to show up. In the gym, I’ll do a twenty minute workout instead of a thirty minute one. At home, playing with my son and hearing his tiny little giggle brightens my day like nothing else can. On the hardest days of that 130-day NICU stay, I never could have imagined that his laughter would be the thing that pulls me through my own slump. Making sure I read just one page of a book before I go to bed that typically ends up becoming the entire chapter. I make sure I do something to keep my momentum inching forward, even if it means I’m moving a little bit slower.

If you keep showing up and doing the little things, good things tend to happen. Let me be clear: they don’t always happen, but they tend to happen. And more importantly, showing up — even when it feels pointless, even when you’re 0-for-32, even when the sun is setting at 3:30 and all you want to do is sleep through the winter — is the only way you give yourself a chance at that breakthrough moment.

Slumps end. Not because we force them to end. Not because we dramatically transform ourselves overnight. They end because we keep stepping into the batter’s box, keep taking our swings, keep trusting that somewhere in the near future, the ball will find grass.

I have to remind myself some days that this feeling of darkness won’t last forever. The sun will start setting later again. The words will flow. The excitement will return. And when it does, I’ll look back at these 0-for-32 stretches and realize they were just part of the rhythm — the necessary troughs that make the peaks worth it all.

So if you’re in your own slump right now, whatever form it takes, I see you. I’m right there with you, 0-for-however-many-it’s-been. This might never be my favourite article of all-time. You might do six reps in the gym instead of your usual ten this week. You might kick your feet up and eat some Doritos and binge watch some of your favourite shows, pushing some responsibilities off until tomorrow. But we’re both still showing up, aren’t we? And that matters more than we think.

Davis Schneider didn’t break his slump with a moonshot homerun. He broke it with a single to left field. Sometimes that’s all we need, not the perfect swing, not the triumphant grand slam, just to put the ball in play, just to reach base, just to remember what it feels like to do the thing we thought we’d forgotten how to do.

Off The Schneid

Something Davis Schneider couldn’t possibly have seen during that 0-for-32 stretch? That in six months, he’d be standing in the batter’s box at Dodger Stadium, leading off Game Five of the World Series. That his next hit wasn’t just a hit, it was an ambush homerun that millions of Canadians will remember forever.

I can’t know what my next hit is going to look like either. Maybe it’s this article, the one I’ve had in an open tab for the last three weeks. Maybe it’s the next one, or the one after that. Maybe it’s something I haven’t even imagined yet, waiting for me on a random Tuesday in March when the sun sets a few minutes later and the air feels a little crisper.

But I know I can’t get there without the slump.

The long winter continues. Spring training is just around the corner. And so is our next hit. The ball will find grass again.

For all of us.