This story was excerpted from Keegan Matheson¡¯s Blue Jays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
TORONTO -- Bo Bichette can be a difficult player to capture.
He rarely opens up much about his own success when it comes, either, but that¡¯s not his job. His job is to hit, and business is booming.
Bichette is unique, though. He could take 20 swings in a game without repeating the same load, the same shape, the same bat path. Toronto manager John Schneider sees a player who isn¡¯t just a great hitter, but making the jump (back) to being an elite one. Bichette¡¯s new hitting coach, David Popkins, sees something fascinating.
We already know that Popkins loves mixing sports metaphors, but when he spoke with Buck Martinez and Dan Shulman on a Spring Training broadcast late in camp, he dropped this golden quote.
¡°We¡¯re seeing a guy who¡¯s able to pick you apart. I¡¯m a big UFC fan and the guy that I always liked to watch fight is Jon Jones,¡± Popkins said on the broadcast. ¡°He really paralyzes guys, because you never know how he¡¯s going to attack you. People get on their toes, and they start getting super reactive to him because he dictates the pace. You see that with Bo. He¡¯s up there and sometimes he¡¯s shooting the hole, sometimes he¡¯s going to hit a ball off the batter¡¯s eye or that 500-foot home run he hit earlier in camp.¡±
Bichette¡¯s a UFC guy, too, so this got him rolling.
¡°Naturally, a hitter is on the defense. We don¡¯t have the ball first. It¡¯s the only form of offense in sports that doesn¡¯t have the ball,¡± Bichette explained. ¡°I like to look at it like this ¡ In any other sport, the defense¡¯s job is to create turnovers and make it really tough on the offense. As a hitter, I like to take chances and try to turn defense into offense. I want to make it as difficult as I can on the pitcher.¡±
He¡¯s doing a damn good job of that so far. Bichette is batting .310 with a .754 OPS through the first seven games of the season and looks like the permanent leadoff man. Why would Schneider want to give the most potential at-bats each night to anyone else?
This mentality of ¡°creating turnovers¡± is what makes Bichette such an interesting fit atop the Blue Jays¡¯ lineup. We¡¯re used to the small, speedy leadoff hitters who try to see 10 pitches, then slap a single on the 11th. This is a team that¡¯s batting Andr¨¦s Gim¨¦nez in the cleanup spot, though. The old archetypes are out the window.
Bichette understands that there¡¯s a perfect balance, one he¡¯s always chasing. Yes, he must always be himself as a hitter, but great hitters can bend and shape that identity to the moment.
¡°It¡¯s just about having every option to attack,¡± Bichette said. ¡°That¡¯s what I pride myself on, being able to adjust to any situation, any pitch, any pitcher, any location.¡±
The other takeaway here is that Bichette and Popkins seem to be speaking the same language, even if there are a lot of layers to that language.
Popkins has earned the trust of Toronto¡¯s hitters, which is more important than anything else in a hitting coach¡¯s job description. All of these hitters have an old coach, a buddy from college or a personal hitting guru in their ear already, so if they don¡¯t trust Popkins fully to put everything together, it can get noisy.
In Bichette¡¯s case, he has his father, Dante. Popkins seems to be nailing that three-headed relationship.
¡°His dad and him have done an incredible job with his mechanics,¡± Popkins said on the Sportsnet broadcast. ¡°There were a couple of things that got off, but I think they got off because of his mentality. It¡¯s just about freeing him up to remind him who he is and who he¡¯s always been through his career. He fills in the rest. He¡¯s extremely intelligent. The two best hitting coaches for Bo are probably Dante and Bo. I just help fill in the gaps.¡±
When Bichette is happy, comfortable and clear-headed, he¡¯s dangerous. Bichette hasn¡¯t expanded on it much, but it¡¯s clear that he wasn¡¯t 3-for-3 with those things for much of 2024.
It felt like only a matter of time until Bichette grabbed his share of the spotlight back. He doesn¡¯t crave the spotlight, but when he¡¯s playing like this, the spotlight craves him.