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TORONTO — Riley Adams isn’t competing for a big-league job this spring.

Instead, he’s simply trying to prove he’s ready for that call in the event he’s needed later this summer in an emergency.

When it comes to the Toronto Blue Jays’ catching situation, the third-round pick from the 2017 draft gets almost no attention.

And that’s not his fault.

Danny Jansen is facing a pivotal season as the incumbent, good-glove starter. Alejandro Kirk’s bat continues to dazzle and the only reason he hasn’t been viewed as a complete lock to make the opening day roster as the backup is the presence of former Pittsburgh Pirates first-round pick Reese McGuire, whose situation as a player now out of minor-league options puts the Jays in a use-him-or-maybe-lose-him spot.

Then there’s Gabriel Moreno, an exciting 21-year-old who has a chance to blow up this summer at Double-A.

All five of them are on the 40-man roster, making for a crowded situation as they start to bottleneck in the system.

It’s a deep and impressive stockpile at a premium position, one that has rival clubs asking about every single one of them in trade talks.

“We’ve got quite the collection of catchers,” Adams said during a one-on-one Zoom call from Dunedin. “We definitely all have different strengths, for sure, but I think that’s cool because there’s a lot of things that each of us do really well and then there’s plenty of things I know each of us can work on. So, we can kind of bounce ideas off each other. We can be open with each other and we’re our biggest coaches, working on little things, so we’re always involved with each other. There are a lot of catchers in our org that do things really well and I want to try to emulate some of those ideas and some of those skills.”

While Jansen, Kirk and McGuire are the immediate options, Adams is quietly having an excellent spring, which comes on the heels of an impressive stint at the alternate site last summer.

Adams has crushed a pair of home runs in his eight Grapefruit League at-bats, continuing to show off the swing and approach changes the Jays have worked so diligently on behind the scenes since he was drafted.

It’s all being done with one goal in mind: Get to the massive power residing in that 6-foot-4, 235-pound frame.

“Watching him progress over the last year two-and-a-half years, he probably has the best raw power in our minor-league system,” said Blue Jays coach John Schneider. “Then watching him kind of tighten his swing up to make more consistent contact, he’s going to do damage when he does hit it. Watching him and listening to the way he’s talking has been impressive and encouraging. Behind the plate is the same thing. It’s just another year of being more comfortable with what’s being done at the big-league level, being a guy who’s never played there. Taking everything he’s worked on in the minors and then really understanding what’s going to work for him and what’s going make him become the best version of him behind the plate is where he’s at right now.”

With 81 games of Double-A experience on his resume from 2019 and his alternate site time last year, Adams, who will turn 25 in June, will essentially be one call away at Triple-A this season.

He feels 2021 could be a breakout season from a personal perspective.

“I can very confidently say this is the most prepared I’ve felt for a season, the most ready my body’s felt and the most confident I’ve felt,” Adams said.

Many within the organization agree.

He’s not only developed nicely, but after being added to the 40-man roster over the winter, there’s confidence he could hold his own this season if he was needed in the majors, even if a full starter’s workload at Triple-A all year is the obvious and ideal scenario.

“He flies under the radar a little bit, even though he’s on the 40-man, but he’s a guy I think can really be a nice little insurance policy,” Schneider said. “Just a guy that’s steady. Big, strong target back there and he’s got a rocket for an arm and he’s going to hit with some power.”

Hunter Mense, the club’s hitting coordinator who worked with Adams on those aforementioned swing changes, has a similar view after seeing the strides he made last year in Rochester.

“If you would’ve asked me that question at this time last year, even with his Double-A time, I don’t know that would be a stretch just because mentally that’s such a gigantic jump,” Mense said. “I see him now and I see the success and some of the stuff he did in Rochester and how he progressed, I see him come into the cage and walk around with his chest out a little bit more with some confidence and the way that he carries himself, he’s way more sure of himself. That takes you so far. So far.”

The changes Adams has made are fairly basic for a big guy with long levers.

Stay back on the baseball, let it travel and let the barrel provide the power, especially against pitchers spinning four-seam fastballs up in the zone, which is what Adams will get a steady diet of in the big leagues.

“It’s to every part of the yard, too,” Mense said. “It’s power that plays to centre, it’s power that really plays to right-centre, and he’s learning how to let that power play to left field more. You look at the stuff he does in BP and he can hit it as hard, he can hit it as far as anybody we have.”

When the Jays plucked Adams with the 99th overall pick four years ago, he came with the same question that’s asked with a lot of young catchers, especially ones his size: Can he stay behind the plate?

Adams has answered those, but his work on the defensive side sometimes came at the expense of the time he spent working on his craft in the batter’s box.

As he got more comfortable behind the plate, he was able to divvy that time up a little bit better recently and Adams feels the bat has taken steps forward because of a season spent at the mysterious ALT site.

“The alternate site was a very interesting season, I can say, but I really tried to use that time, being that there’s no stats, there’s no batting averages, there’s nothing that comes out of that. I wanted to use that time to try some things, work on some new things that I wanted to do with my swing,” Adams said. “I went through some struggles here and there trying some different stuff, but towards the end I was just trying to get into that power and use my body to my advantage.

“I know out of college in the draft there were a lot more questions on the catching side of things and I think I was pretty quick to prove that I could stay back here, and my body could hold up catching with the wear and tear and also stay flexible. We had a lot of good catching coaches that helped get me right and make some fixes, and now the bat’s the one that’s a little slower to come around. I’m still working through that, still trying to figure some things out, but the bat’s definitely starting to come around now.”

The comparison Adams heard for a while is another long-levered University of San Diego alum, Chicago Cubs star Kris Bryant. But those similarities are starting to fade a bit.

“If you want to go back and look up video of me in college and even short-season Vancouver, I had a very Kris Bryant swing,” Adams explained. “I was very spread out and not much of a stride or anything like that. I had success with that type of swing, but those are some of the bigger changes I was trying to make in the box because I knew that there was more power in there and I wasn’t using my whole body as well as I could have. So that’s been a big change, trying to get into my legs a little bit more, have a little bit more flow, have a little bit more rhythm with the pitcher. But, yeah, I’ve heard it a couple times, the old Riley Adams, Kris Bryant comparison. If I could have a career like he does and play like the way he is, I think that would be pretty cool.”

Catchers don’t have it easy. Their responsibilities are endless, from the time that goes into preparing for an opposing lineup to developing relationships with pitchers to game calling to the physical skills of blocking balls, getting out of the crouch to gun down runners and framing pitches to steal strikes.

That’s without even mentioning trying to hit. With his swing changes now habit, Adams has been focusing on the details this spring.

“That’s probably one of the biggest things I know I can improve on is the game management side of it,” Adams said. “Understanding pitchers, understanding tendencies, what they want to work on.”

He’s also trying to make his frame a pro, rather than the con scouts saw a few years ago.

“I’m definitely not the prototypical catcher that I think you see on paper, but what I can do well is use my size to my advantage,” he said. “Be a bigger target for a pitcher to throw to, use my athleticism. That’s something I always kind of fall back on when I play and being able to use my size to help me. I know there are some things that make it a little tougher and those are flexibility issues and making sure I stay limber and move quick and those are things that I have to take the extra time to do myself in the weight room here and make sure that I get still get down there, still move around and the body holds up. I take a lot of pride in my body, especially in the off-season, making sure this body can hold for a full season and stay strong and do well.”

Even though he’s far from a finished product at this point, Adams should not be overlooked in the Jays’ positional big picture behind the plate.​