How an increase in whiffs has slowed Blue Jays’ Bichette’s momentum

Bo Bichette came in 2023 as a player who’d demonstrated remarkable year-to-year consistency with a wRC+ between 120 and 129 in each of the previous three seasons.

The Toronto Blue Jays shortstop could always be counted on to compensate for a low walk rate with plenty of power and an ability to spray liners around the diamond — leading to a high percentage of his balls in play leading to hits.

All of that makes for a potent offensive profile, but early this season it looked like Bichette had found a new level. From the beginning of the season through May 31, the 25-year-old hit .333/.370/.525, good for a 149 wRC+.

Not only was that production outstanding, but with additional context it looked even more impressive. That’s because Bichette had finished 2022 on a tear — meaning that by the time June rolled around he’d put together a 396-plate appearance stretch with a 174 wRC+.

Those results were backed by a promising trend for Bichette as his strikeout rate dropped to 14.1 per cent, well below the 22.0 per cent rate he’d posted in his career prior to his September 2022 hot streak. Strikeouts are statistics that tend to be meaningful in relatively short samples and Bichette cut his Ks by a massive margin over an 88-game span.

Considering how dangerous the shortstop’s balls in play are, hitting significantly more of them seemed likely to lead to meaningful improvement on Bichette’s already stellar offensive standard.

Unfortunately for Bichette, that trend has come to an abrupt halt. Since June 1, Bichette has hit .296/.309/.457. That stat line is far from disastrous — particularly for a shortstop — but it has slowed his momentum.

The offensive decline has been driven by a strikeout rate that has suddenly climbed to a far higher rate than we’ve seen from him lately.

At the same time his walk rate has fallen to a minuscule 1.2 per cent. It’s tough to be an elite offensive player when you strike out 20 times for every walk, which is what Bichette has done since June 1.

Part of that story is swing selection. Even when he was rolling in the first two months of the season, he offered at 37.4 per cent of pitches outside the zone — well above the MLB average of 28.3 per cent. Over his last 38 games that number has jumped to 45.3 per cent.

While that ultra-aggressive approach explains the lack of walks, Bichette has still managed a solid 80.4 per cent contact rate during that span. Even though he’s swinging at worse pitches, that doesn’t necessarily explain his strikeout spike.

A better explanation for that is the decline in Bichette’s vaunted two-strike approach. Here’s a comparison between how he fared in those counts in the first two months of 2023 compared to the last two.

Split	Called Strike%	Whiffs/Swing	Fouls/Swing	Balls in play/Swing
March 30 – May 30	1.3%	14.3%	46.9%	37.3%
June 1 – July 18	4.6%	23.8%	42.8%	33.3%

These numbers are a little worse across the board for Bichette with the increase in whiffs standing out the most. Nothing in here is extreme enough to warrant panic, but it is intriguing that Bichette seems to be missing different pitches in two-strike counts than he did during his hot start.

In the opening months of the season, Bichette was vulnerable primarily against sliders and sweepers breaking away from him.

There isn’t enough evidence to suggest that this will be the case for the rest of the season, but it will bear monitoring in the weeks to come.

None of what we’ve seen in the last couple of months is sufficient evidence to suggest that Bichette is in for a rough end to the season. Even with his current struggles to maintain a reasonable BB/K ratio, Bichette is still contributing to the Blue Jays’ offence.

Instead, it’s an indication that what the shortstop did at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 was more of a hot streak than a career-altering breakout. That may have always been the most likely outcome, but when a player cuts his strikeouts so drastically over nearly 400 plate appearances it’s hard not to take notice.

The season-to-season consistency Bichette displayed coming into 2023 seems likely to hold as his current 134 wRC+ is in line with last year’s 129 mark. What he’s going to do for weeks, or even months at a time is anyone’s guess, though.

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