Bo Bichette says Blue Jays need to find “another level professionalism, discipline, and consistency” to reach potential
By Cam Lewis
5 months agoThis competitive window hasn’t gone as planned for the Toronto Blue Jays.
Since this current core made its first post-season appearance during the pandemic-shortened season with the expanded bracket, the Blue Jays have dropped six playoff games and have yet to win one.
There was no surprise when a team full of rookies got swept aside by the first-place Tampa Bay Rays in 2020 and it was difficult to blame the team when they came up one game short on the last day of the 2021 season after spending the first half of the year playing on the road.
If you’re generous, you could suggest that the implosion against the Seattle Mariners in 2022 was the result of the Blue Jays being an inexperienced group getting overwhelmed by the bright lights of post-season baseball. But when it comes to being swept by the Minnesota Twins in 2023, a team that had lost 18 consecutive playoff games over the course of nearly two decades, there simply isn’t a positive spin to be made.
The Blue Jays are no longer a young team, and if they aren’t able to take a step forward in 2024, changes will certainly need to be made. Of course, that’s a conversation for next winter. For now, the team is focused on making good on its potential.
“At the end of the day with our team, there’s no doubt in my mind we have everything we need to win,” shortstop Bo Bichette said on Blair and Barker earlier this week. It comes down to everybody living up to their potential. I haven’t done what I’m capable of doing. The team hasn’t done what it’s capable of doing. There’s another level of professionalism, discipline and consistency we need to get to. I believe if we do that, we have everything we need now.”
Toronto came flying out of the gates last spring and had an 18-10 record at the end of April, a strong start fuelled by red-hot months from Matt Chapman and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. The team cooled down when those two did and they never found the same groove offensively at the plate. The Blue Jays slogged through the season with a surprisingly limp offence and finished 89-73 thanks largely to their pitching and defence.
Bichette was the team’s best player, worth 3.8 wins above replacement according to FanGraphs, despite the fact that he missed about a month of play with a groin injury. He said that work behind the scenes in staying 100 percent is what’s necessary for the Blue Jays to push themselves over the top.
“It’s just going to take a lot more discipline and consistency with all the stuff that’s not seen,” Bichette said. “People see the ground balls and the hitting but they don’t see the rest of the stuff it takes to stay healthy and those are things I can honestly say I didn’t do a good enough job of.”
While Bichette believes that the Blue Jays feature enough talent on their roster already to be successful, he mentioned that adding some veteran bats would be helpful. He also noted that he followed along with the Shohei Ohtani saga and felt the pain of Blue Jays fans when the team came up short.
“I was definitely invested [during Ohtani’s free agency], so I felt the pain that I saw the fanbase was feeling,” Bichette said. “To be able to play with a player like that was something that obviously excited everybody.”“There are still great players out there. Justin Turner and J.D. Martinez are two guys that come to my mind, veteran bats that can help not just on the field but off the field as well.”
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