Article: Bo Bichette's Revival Has More Chapters Left

[Owen Hill]

Coming into 2025, it was clear that the Blue Jays’ success was going to hinge on bounce backs from some key players, and with a hold of first place at the All-Star break, it’s safe to say that, so far, the Jays have gotten the contributions they’ve needed.

Alejandro Kirk’s renaissance has earned him a second career all-star selection, and George Springer has come back from the dead to put up a 137 wRC+ so far. Bo Bichette has also bounced back from a terrible 2024, but while his teammates have thrived, Bichette has flown under the radar.

The most important thing is that he’s back to playing every day, but still, we’re waiting on Bichette to get back to being the offensive threat that made him a star between 2021 and 2023. That’s not to call him out for being useless at the plate—his 112 wRC+ is, of course, better than league average, and his .396 average with runners in scoring position has helped make up for his lack of success in lower leverage (even if you’re not a big believer in hitting with RISP being an actual skill). Still, it’s hard not to feel like something is missing in Bichette’s offensive game.

He’s hitting just .282, which would be his lowest average in a healthy season, and it’s a similar story for his ISO, which is also the lowest of his healthy seasons at .160. His .767 OPS is fine, but, again, leaving a little bit to be desired for a bat that has been very important to team success in recent seasons. The weird thing is: His underlying data looks eerily similar to how it did two, three, and four years ago, all years where his OPS+ finished in the .800s.

Comparing this season to his 2023 campaign, a year where he was an All-Star, hit 20 homers, and finished third for the American League batting title, Bo Bichette is currently hitting the ball harder, hitting the ball hard more often, and striking out less. Yet, his results are down across the board, despite his expected stats being up. In fact, if he was achieving his xwOBA of .377, it would be the highest of his entire career up to this point. The problem is that his actual wOBA is sitting at just .331.

The obvious place to look is at his BABIP, and yes, at .314, there is a sizable gap between his number for 2025 and his previous norms in a healthy season. Given that this is the case, I was thinking that there was a chance that Bichette had been the victim of exceptional defence, but that’s simply not what’s happening. Opposing defenses have actually played to a negative one outs above average when Bichette is at the plate.

One of my other early theories when trying to diagnose the reason for Bichette’s underperformance was that his decline in speed was making his slap-hitting offensive approach less effective, as he would be unable to steal as many infield hits, or turn singles into doubles, and there may be some merit to this idea. 

Bichette is running a 4.1 infield-hit percentage, calculated by dividing a player’s total number of infield hits by their total number of ground balls. The 4.1% mark is more than two percent lower than his career average, and six percent lower than his last healthy season in 2023, when he had the 11th-highest mark in baseball. In that time frame, Bichette’s sprint speed has declined considerably, although it’s important to note that even in 2023, he was a below average runner, averaging just 27.1 feet per second. In 2025, his sprint speed is now at just 26.1 feet per second, just in the 22nd percentile in baseball.

We can’t attribute a 46 point difference in wOBA and xwOBA solely to Bichette missing out on a couple extra infield hits, although it may account for a touch of what’s been missing. I’d also say that his decline in speed is a direct indicator of a decline in athleticism, something I’d be concerned about when projecting ahead to future seasons and the type of contract Bichette is going to receive this offseason.

Digging in even further, Bichette's batted ball profile doesn’t really help explain the drop in production either. He’s pulling the ball at his highest rate since 2020, has his lowest ground ball to fly ball ratio since 2020, and his line drive percentage is right in line with his career norms. These are all positive indicators, especially for a hitter like Bichette who produces great average exit velocities.

I’ll leave you with one final theory.

Bichette’s average exit velocity has climbed in 2025, but the majority of the difference is coming against fastballs. He’s hitting them at a career high average exit velocity, but he isn’t hitting breaking balls and off-speed pitches as hard as he did in prior successful years.

Taking that into account, we can take a look at Bichette's average launch angle by pitch and see that he’s not hitting fastball’s, the pitch he hits the hardest, in the air:

Now, expected stats do take into account both exit velocity and launch angle, but being unable to get his hardest hit balls in the air may explain some of his lack of power. If that changes, we could see a massive spike in actual production.

Overall, there are a bunch of reasons to believe that Bo Bichette may be due for some positive regression, and I’m looking forward to seeing if he can shrink the gap between his expected stats and his actual stats in the second half.

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[Hill]

No getting back to 2022/23 levels would be huge for the playoff push. Let’s hope he & his buddy at 1B figure it out soon!