Bo Bichette has become the Blue Jays’ leader. Here’s how

For someone who once played through the agony of an undiagnosed ruptured appendix for a fortnight, it’s not surprising that Bo Bichette would ignore a niggling pain in his quadriceps muscle, anxious to stay on the field.

He’d just come off three weeks on the injured list with right knee patellar tendinitis, after all, and in the absence of their best player the Blue Jays had gone a middling 8-8. Though middling would be an apt description of Toronto’s disappointing 2023 campaign thus far, with or without Bichette to inject some brio into the lineup.

So Bichette brushed aside the discomfort and played on for a few more days, likely aggravating the situation further, until the soreness forced him to pull out midway through a game against Cleveland last Sunday. “It’s obviously hard to know for sure, but yeah, the two are connected,” he says of the back-to-back ailments. “There’s a possibility I rushed myself back. Nobody else did that to me.”

An MRI had confirmed the matter and on Tuesday, for the second time in a month, Bichette was placed on the 10-day IL, frustratingly taking him out of the equation just as the urgency meter hits high pitch for his team, scrambling to His projected restoration to the roster is Sept. 8, when Toronto hosts the Kansas City Royals.

He spoke with the Star about the setback in a one-on-one interview this week, even though a player on the injured list isn’t obligated to talk to the media.

With the Jays now on a six-game road trip that might very well determine their fate, Bichette can only watch from the dugout — he certainly wasn’t about to stay behind — and talk hitting with his mates, be a presence in the clubhouse, root: “It’s just important at this point of the year to be around the team.” Merely spectating is vexing. “It’ll be tough. Hopefully we can win a lot of games, that’ll make it easier.”

The situation is, frankly, dire. The club’s playoff odds recently dropped below 50 per cent for the first time since May, as per FanGraphs. Wresting that third wild-card spot from the teams immediately above them —Houston and Texas (Tampa’s too far ahead to target) — requires an intrepid performance from a club which this year has never stitched together more than a six-game win streak. Heading into Friday night’s game in Denver, the Jays needed to go 19-9 to overtake the Rangers, assuming Texas maintains its current pace.

But ballers, most of whom claim they don’t scoreboard watch, live and breathe in the margins of possibility. It was Bichette’s sparkling turnaround last August that propelled the Jays into the post-season: “From an individual perspective, a lot of people wrote me off last year at this time as well. So it’s never too late individually or for the team.”

Of course, there’s nothing to rebuke Bichette for this season. He’s been Toronto’s most consistent, most reliable and most effective player. Even after 16 games on the sidelines in early August, upon his return Bichette still led the league in hits, second in batting average, topped the Jays with an .832 on-base plug slugging percentage and was second in home runs with 18. One of the best two-strike hitters in the game. There’s always an exhale sense of promise when he comes to the plate.

The team, however, hasn’t reflected that composure and constancy. There’s a fault line that has run through this club since training camp broke and nobody can figure how it went off the rails for a team that was expected to challenge for a division title.

“I think we could play more fearless and more aggressive,” says Bichette, which is as close as he’ll get to a critical analysis of what’s been wanting. Rarely a significant surge. It’s been very similar the whole year. “People probably gave us more rope for the first couple of months and thought: OK, it’ll come. And it just hasn’t yet. But like I said, like my own self last year, it’s never too late to turn it around. That’s the mindset we all have.

“As much expectations as we had from everybody around us, we had more for ourselves. Any time you don’t meet the expectations you have for yourself, it’s frustrating. But I think the team is doing a great job of continuing to come here and working. Honestly, I like a lot of things we’ve been doing recently. Our at-bats are better from a number of guys.”

If that sounds a bit wistful, Bichette nevertheless firmly believes it. And it definitely remains the tenor in the clubhouse, too, on a team that no longer has the ebullience of youth but has ripened in experience and, crucially, has the pitching that can overcome its deficits elsewhere. Against this background, Bichette, who never appears rattled, doesn’t outwardly show dejection or elation — an oasis of calm — and has assumed a mantle of leadership at just 25 years of age.

“The way he works, the way he goes about his business, the way he supports his teammates,” says Vladimir Guerrero Jr., admiringly. The two have been in career lockstep for much of the past decade. “He’s been a great teammate of mine for years. We talk about hitting, we talk about defence, we talk about everything. If one of us is struggling, we talk about that. But me and Bo, it goes beyond that. We’re family.

“Me and Bo, we are similar. We’re very quiet.” A lift of the eyebrows at that comment, given Guerrero’s dugout frolics. “No, I mean in here (the clubhouse). But whenever we need to talk, everybody listens.”

Manager John Schneider has observed Bichette’s maturing process through the minor ranks to the big leagues. “He lets his play do the talking, prides himself on being out there every day. So whenever he’s not able to, it hurts him.”

Across his first stint on the shelf, Bichette could be seen talking to teammates — hitting is usually the subject, parsing at-bats, advising even veterans. “The way he plays, the consistency with which he’s out there and his performance,” Schneider continues, “guys gravitate toward him because of that.”

Bichette: “I think I’ve earned that, the right to be listened to. And it’s the only thing I can do right now.”

He’s embraced the stewardship role: baseball influencer.

“I’ve always dreamt of being an important piece on a team that’s trying to win a championship. And also I’ve been a leader at every step in my life, on every team. Being a leader a lot of times comes from your performance on the field and you complement that with the way you go about your business, the way you work, the way you treat others, the way you play. I like the responsibility.

“I’ve discovered that there’s a certain amount of people who look up to me. So that brings an extra element of learning how to be professional, and setting an example. I always knew how good I could be.

“But actually going out there and proving that over an extended period of time, you start to really believe it instead of just knowing what you’re capable of. I don’t know if there’s anything new I’ve learned about myself. It’s just confirmation.”

While the son of a four-time all-star in Dante Bichette, the scion points to former teammate Marcus Semien — who had a career season in his one year as a Blue Jay, 2021 — as his exemplar of leadership: “Everything comes down to the preparation, being consistent, the amount of work, the team that you are, how hard you play every day. I think leadership is about being a consistent human and a consistent professional and he definitely exhibited all those attributes. He was somebody I learned a ton from.”

The work ethic was obvious in all the hours Bichette put in pre-game to elevate his defence and minimize the errors — a high of 24 in ’21, just eight this season. Hundreds and hundreds of ground balls taken with third base coach Luis Rivera.

“A lot of balls, a lot of throws, a lot of repetition,” says Rivera. “Taking 20 to 25 ground balls but at game speed, so that when the game starts you don’t have to make adjustments.”

Studying the running speed of hitters so that he has a firmer grasp of how much time he’s got to make an out throw, reading the ball better off the bat, moving his feet adroitly on the hop of a ground ball, getting the ball out of his glove cleanly. “Yes, he’s going to make errors; it’s part of the game,” says Rivera. “But how to deal with that? The only thing he was missing was mental. Now he’s got to the point where he’s fixed his mind.”

He’s won at every level but this one, and it’s fair to ask if the window of opportunity — not just to make the playoffs, but go deep — is already starting to close, at least as the current roster is composed, and general manager Ross Atkins will have to answer for that.

You know, Bichette can own this town as the face of the franchise just as much as Guerrero. We know him for his long tresses, the signature headband, diamond ear studs. There are other layers that he’s mostly kept private. Biblical scriptures, for example, he’s occasionally posted on social media, as a Christian though not wearing faith on his sleeve as some athletes do.

“Faith is important to me. I’m just like everybody else. I’m not perfect, I struggle with a variety of different things. But yeah, that’s what gives me hope in life, that’s what gives me the strength to move forward, to continue to battle through the ups and down. It’s what keeps me humble when things are going well.”

In an alternate universe, Bichette might have been a tennis player. He had the talent and the interest. He’d still sooner watch a Grand Slam final than the NBA Finals or Super Bowl. But he was predestined for baseball. It’s baked into his DNA.

The rest he forged himself.

“In the minor leagues, we won pretty much every year I was there. A lot of that came from hard work, but a lot of it was talent. But when you get up here, everybody has talent and most teams are working hard. A lot of times it’s more about competitiveness and the will to win.

“I definitely respect how difficult it is to win up here.”