SEATTLE – Back at the all-star game two years after his first, Bo Bichette doesn’t feel especially different as a player. The Toronto Blue Jays shortstop, 25 now as opposed to 23 last time in Denver, believes he’s become more consistent in his work, in his approach, and experience helping him to better navigate the grind of 162 games.
“Not ride the wave, basically,” Bichette, sitting on the T-Mobile Park warning track beneath grey skies, said Monday ahead of the Home Run Derby. “In baseball, there are going to be a lot of times where you feel like you’re the best player in the world and there are going to be a lot of times where you feel like the worst player in the world. If you’re always feeling that and riding that emotion, it’s going to be a long and tiring season. I’ve learned that for sure over the past couple of years. And so I just feel like I’ve been able to relax and save my energy a little bit by not freaking out every time something goes bad, or thinking I’m the best when everything is good.”
That steadiness has been reflected in his play to this point, a .317/.346/.496 batting line putting him on pace for his best full season in the majors yet. He batted .298/.343/.484 during that first all-star season in 2021 but had to rescue a subpar first four months a year ago with a torrid stretch mid-August onwards, getting his numbers up to .290/.333/.469.
While on the surface it seems like Bichette simply picked up where things left off this year, his mindset at the plate then is vastly different than it is now.
“Last September, to be honest, I knew I had a lot of ground to make up for my own statistics,” he explained. “So it was more like not giving in, never taking chances and making sure that I was able to get my hits all the time. Now, I’m a little bit more comfortable in taking chances to try to drive the ball.”
Working through the ebbs and flows of games, months, seasons and careers is a common thread with him and his fellow Blue Jays all-stars in Seattle – Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Whit Merrifield and Jordan Romano.
Guerrero Jr., is back at the Midsummer Classic for a third straight summer at 24 years old, still trying to recapture his MVP-calibre form of 2021, putting up solid numbers in the meantime.
Similar to Bichette, he pointed to being “more experienced,” as the key change from that first all-star game to this one, “knowing the players a lot more, so it gives me the time to enjoy the moment even better, to embrace it better.”
Romano, 30, is back for the second straight year, a last-day replacement pick both times. While he’s throwing more sliders than fastballs this year, essentially reversing his usage from a year ago, and has cut his hard-hit ball rate from 45.9 per cent to 35.8 per cent this year, he struggles to identify what, if anything, has changed.
“Honestly, I try to attack hitters the same way this year as last year,” he said. “I wouldn’t say too much different. Maybe just had a few more life experiences.”
Merrifield, 34, has plenty of those and is particularly grateful to be back at the all-star game for a third time and first since that 2021 game in which Bichette and Guerrero made it for the first time.
“The further out in your career you get, anytime you can do something like this, you start really appreciating it because you don’t know, it might be the last one I get to go to,” said Merrifield, also an all-star in 2019. “For me, the first one, I was like, ‘Holy cow, I can’t believe this.’ Second one, I was like, ‘This is cool.’ And this one, it’s like, ‘Man, I’m really trying to soak in the whole experience.’”
Bichette is both trying to soak in his experiences while continuing to apply them on the field.
Already this season he’s had two five-hit games, two four-hit games and eight three-hit games, products of his uncanny knack for making contact with pitches all over the zone. Of his league-leading 122 knocks, 60 have been to the opposite field, far more than anyone else in the majors. And his numbers are all supported by predictive data, which has him in the 99th percentile for expected batting average and 91st percentile for expected slug.
“I think it has to do with me seeing the ball deep, for sure,” Bichette said of all the opposite-field contact. “When you’re seeing the ball deep, you’re going to use the middle of the field or right field. Some of it is coincidence or how I’m being pitched. I don’t necessarily want to hit it over there, it’s just kind of what has happened.”
Bichette’s always had that ability, however.
Manager John Schneider remembers one game from 2017 with advanced-A Dunedin in which Charlotte, then the Tampa Bay Rays’ affiliate, employed a defensive shift against Bichette with two strikes, loading up on the opposite field side rather than the pull side.
“Of course it was Tampa,” quipped Schneider. “It’s the minor-leagues, you can kind of do whatever you want. But it’s a tough guy to really shade either way. You have to really dial it into like, ‘Hey, if you’re going to throw this pitch, we’re going to be here.’ He can do anything with the bat, really. So it’s tough to shift him – he can do a lot.”
Brandon Belt, seeing it up close with the Blue Jays for the first time this year, is most impressed by “how late he can hit the ball.”
“It seems like he gets the ball out of the catcher’s mitt sometimes. For hits, too. It’s not just filets to right field – he’s hitting the ball hard,” added the veteran DH/first baseman. “He’ll take his walks when he needs to, but he’s going to put the ball in play more often than not. And in today’s game, that’s tremendously tough to do and be really good at hitting. Pitchers are really good. Defences are really good. If you’re going outside your zone at all, it makes it a lot tougher. I feel like he can hit the ball no matter where it is, on the plate, off the plate. It doesn’t matter.”
For Bichette, none of that is an accident, starting with a pre-game routine designed to prepare him for executing when it counts. He hits off the tee, then takes flips, then batting practice, working on going to right field first, moving to centre and then left, all aimed at making him “able to handle every pitch” and “any type of pitcher.”
As for his comfort now versus last September, and airing it out versus attacking from a more conservative posture, Bichette said that was tied to “how you feel in the moment, what’s been working.”
“I want to be a perfect hitter, but I’ve got to figure out what I’m good at in the moment,” he continued. “There have been times where I’ve been able to get a hit when I need to, and there have been times where I feel like I can go for more.”
The balance act has carried him to Seattle and another all-star appearance, not that different but better than before.
