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What does it look like for a Major Leaguer to rebuild his swing from scratch?

For Ryan Jeffers, it involved late evenings in his garage, swinging a broomstick handle with hitting coach David Popkins on FaceTime, going through every mechanical element of his swing and trading videos back and forth every day, trying to reassert the catcher as the offensive threat he’s always believed he can be in the Majors.

Jeffers thinks he’s finally found himself.

“I believe I can be a top-five hitting catcher in the game,” Jeffers said. “I know what I can do defensively. I know that I can stay in the game for a while doing what I do with the glove, calling the game, stuff like that. There's a lot of catchers in the game that can't do it all. I know -- I truly believe -- that I’m not one of those.”

Now in his fourth year, Jeffers has had some stretches in which he felt confident at the plate, but he always knew there were mechanical flaws to be addressed. He didn’t necessarily have a way to address those, especially as he focused harder on the defensive side of his game, trying to earn the confidence of his veteran pitchers.

But with Popkins in the fold, Jeffers started hitting a month and a half earlier than he normally would during the offseason. It was simple work with the broomstick handle and hitting off a tee to go through the process of elimination as they worked with the goal of using the ground better in his swing. They worked to find the right motions and eliminate what wasn’t needed.

They talked through examples of different hitters with similar body types who had similar issues with their swings, and how those players addressed those issues. One by one, they went down the list, figuring out what made Jeffers comfortable.

The new swing starts with a bat-tip, which he did in an abbreviated form for a while last year, but helps him coordinate and prime his bat movement.

“It looks like a big move on camera, whatever, but it helps me get that lasso effect, to kind of keep that moving,” Jeffers said.

Jeffers and Popkins first experimented with turning his stride into a toe-tap, but they ended up settling on no stride to eliminate what they felt was an unnecessary motion in his swing.

“I'm plenty strong enough to not have to have extra moves in my swing that I don't need,” Jeffers said. “It doesn't need extra moves to create that power.”

The end goal: Hit the ball more consistently to all fields. It’s a small sample size so far, but Jeffers’ work has earned immediate validation with a 4-for-9 start with a homer and only one strikeout through his first three games.

“I needed someone like Popkins, who really understands hitting, to dig in there and help me with a lot of the mechanical stuff,” Jeffers said. “The explosiveness was there. The twitchiness was there. I just had to put it all together. I think it's where we've gotten."