Is there cause for optimism amidst Bo Bichette’s batting struggles?

WASHINGTON — The Jake Irvin sinker came in at 94 m.p.h., starting off the plate away before running back in and just slightly, maybe only by a seam, grazing the edge of the strike zone. As borderline as it gets. For some umpires a strike, for others a ball. Sometimes both in one game, human error being what it is.

For Jonathan Parra, who had the plate Saturday in Washington, it was a strike. And as Blue Jays shortstop Bo Bichette dropped his bat and began unfastening his elbow guard, believing he’d just worked a full-count walk, the umpire stepped back and punched the air behind him. Incensed, Bichette took one look at Parra, turned away, and slammed his helmet into the dirt. Without hesitation, Parra shot his hand through the air again, this time to signal Bichette’s ejection from the game.

“I thought it was a really good helmet toss, for his first ejection. And I thought it was a little early, to be honest with you,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “Bo was grinding that at-bat. I don’t know how many pitches it was. He’s fouling stuff off. Probably a little frustrated. You totally understand it with good players.”

It was nine pitches — only the fifth time in his last 400 trips that Bichette’s seen that many in a plate appearance. It was definitely frustration, as Bichette, enduring a .195/.254/.276 slump to start his season, conceded afterwards. And it’s unquestionably a good player, one whose exceptionally productive track record stands in stark contrast to the results of his first 32 games in 2024.

Through 32 games last season, Bichette had an OPS of .902 with 13 extra-base hits, seven of them homers. So far this year, his OPS is .530 with seven extra-base hits, one of them a homer. Bichette’s rolling wOBA (weighted on-base average) presents an argument that he’s going through the worst stretch of his young career:

So, yes, he’s frustrated. And that frustration can sometimes manifest in a torpedoed helmet after yet another plate appearance doesn’t go your way. But Bichette is also a realist with a very clear-eyed perspective on what’s happening around him. So, Friday night, when Schneider told him he was being dropped to fifth in the batting order the next day, Bichette didn’t argue the move. He said he thought it was the right time.

“He’s good — he gets it,” Schneider said. “He holds himself to such a high standard. Yeah, he’s pissed. He’s frustrated. … It’s hard when you’re not getting the results you want. And I think Bo takes it especially hard because of his personality.”

Saturday was the first time Bichette has started a game in a batting-order position that low in 18 months — a span of 195 starts. Over 95 per cent of his big-league starts have been in the top four. Only six weeks ago, as spring training was coming to a close, Bichette was asked where he preferred to hit in Toronto’s batting order and said it didn’t matter, only that he valued consistency and batting in the first inning. Given his talent and track record, there was no reason to expect him to hit anywhere but first through third.

At the Letters

Ben Nicholson-Smith is Sportsnet’s baseball editor. Arden Zwelling is a senior writer. Together, they bring you the most in-depth Blue Jays podcast in the league, covering off all the latest news with opinion and analysis, as well as interviews with other insiders and team members.

Listen and Subscribe for free

Follow Ben on Twitter

Follow Arden on Twitter

Thirty-two exasperating games later, Bichette was batting in a different spot than he did the night before, and a different spot than he would the night following, without certainty he’d hit in the first inning. Baseball is a game that takes a long time to play out — but things can change quickly, too.

“If that’s what we think is the best option for us to start scoring runs, then I’m willing to do whatever,” Bichette said. “We’ve gotta get going. And I haven’t done much to contribute. So, whatever they want.

“I haven’t done anything, really, to produce. And we’ve struggled as a team. So, I think it’s the right time to switch things up. And if I’ve got to be the one who goes down, then that’s fine.”

One thing that might forever be consistent is no one being harder on Bichette than Bichette himself. He’s contributed; he’s done things to help the Blue Jays win. His three-run triple off Brady Singer in a victory over the Kansas City Royals two weeks ago was that game’s most impactful event by win probability added. The same can be said of his two-run homer off early Cy Young contender George Kirby two weeks prior to that.

But in terms of cumulative, season-long WPA (win probability added), Bichette ranks last among Blue Jays hitters. That George Springer ranks second-last tells you everything you need to know about why the Blue Jays are where they are right now. The only Blue Jay to make more plate appearances this season than Bichette and Springer is Vladimir Guerrero Jr. As those three go, the Blue Jays offence will go.

And while each of those three has been struggling uniquely to begin the season, Bichette’s issues are perhaps most confounding. His peripheral numbers are all consistent with — if not better than — his career averages. Nothing stands out in his walk, strikeout, contact, or chase rates, suggesting his approach has remained consistent.

What hasn’t is Bichette’s quality of contact. His average exit velocity has lowered slightly, his hard-hit rate is down moderately, and his barrel rate has suffered greatly:

A “barrel” is a way of quantifying a very well-struck ball — one with an exit velocity and launch angle that has produced over a .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage since the Statcast era began nine seasons ago. Bichette has reliably been a top-100 barrel-rate hitter since he entered the league. Prior to this season, his lowest barrel rate for any single month in his career was 6.1 per cent.

But currently, it’s two per cent, which ranks within the bottom 10 per cent of qualified MLB hitters. That’s borderline unbelievable for a player of Bichette’s talent. His aggressive approach has played throughout his career because of his elite hand-eye coordination and how well he controls his barrel within such an explosive swing. Even during prior slumps, making solid contact has never been an issue.

Bichette has tried making plenty of adjustments to correct this. At times, he’s even ditched his two-strike approach — in which he eliminates his leg kick to let pitches get deeper and prioritize contact — when it’s felt like the right thing to do in the box. Remember the triple against Singer? Probably his biggest hit so far this year? It came in a 2-2 count. And look at his front leg:

The work continued with his father, Dante, in the Rogers Centre batting cages throughout Toronto’s last homestand. And recently, he’s started making progress. Seven of the 16 balls Bichette has put in play over Toronto’s last five games have come off his bat at 100 m.p.h. or harder. He’d hit only four of 38 balls that hard over his prior 12 games. The results haven’t arrived yet — but beneath the surface, it appears something’s turning.

“I’ve felt good for probably about four or five games now,” Bichette said Saturday. “Just no results. But it is what it is.”

Bichette’s swing decisions have also improved over the last week, which is saying something. Even in his hottest stretches, Bichette regularly expands the zone, taking chances with aggressive cuts early in plate appearances before honing in on contact with two strikes. Since his first full season in 2020, he’s swinging at 56.8 per cent of the pitches he’s seen — the fourth-highest rate among qualified hitters over that span.

But since the beginning of last Monday’s series against the Kansas City Royals at Rogers Centre, Bichette has swung at only half the pitches he’s been thrown, and done so more discerningly than usual, running a 27.6 per cent chase rate that stands out against his 37 per cent career average. Here are his swings and takes over the last week:

To recap — over the last week, Bichette has been letting the pitches he can’t do damage on go by, swinging at good ones to hit, and putting balls in play at high rates of speed. This is exactly the process you’d ask any struggling hitter to stick to — damn the results.

It also lends credence to the theory you’ll hear a lot around the Blue Jays that Bichette has been only a tick off through his first 32 games and is on the verge of breaking out in a very loud way. At least that’s what everyone’s hoping. He’s so critical to the Blue Jays’ success, it’s hard to imagine them having the season they intend to without his production returning to where it’s been historically.

Of course, it’s important to remember Bichette has scuffled plenty of times before. And when he has, the stretches that follow have been prolific.

He had a rough, early-season go when he was playing for Schneider in double-A six years ago, with an OPS of .614 over a 30-game stretch. He came out of it with a .980 OPS over his next 32. At the major-league level in 2022, he had an OPS of .725 through the end of August, getting dropped by Schneider to seventh in the batting order, before going nuts and putting up a 1.106 OPS over his final 32 games.

Is he about to do it again? We’ll see. The signs are certainly there. The frustration is, too — make no mistake. You don’t often see Bichette spiking helmets. But over the last couple weeks, he’s been doing exactly what he needs to fight he way out of it. He knows what he’s capable of; he knows slumps happen. But that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

“There’s no panic because I’ve been through it before. But I wouldn’t say it gets any easier,” Bichette said. “Obviously, you saw me [Saturday,] there’s frustration. Not just from my performance, but from how the team is performing, too. The only difference is that I’m not in the long term worried about it. But it doesn’t get any easier day to day.”

More from Sportsnet

Manoah, Guerrero Jr. and Blue Jays simply can’t find consistency

Blue Jays’ Alek Manoah gives up seven runs in MLB return

Source link