Bichette not ready to pull curtain down on '24 season

TORONTO -- The IL is no place for Bo Bichette. He needs wide-open spaces, a ballgame each night and 10,000 ground balls in the afternoon.

Bichette’s return won’t matter much to the Blue Jays’ record, which has long been an afterthought. Perhaps he finishes the season batting .230 instead of .222, but that’s not what this is about. Bichette needs to feel like himself again, even if only for a week or two before the curtains close on a season everyone is eager to forget.

While the Blue Jays were busy beating the Mets, 6-2, Bichette was down with Triple-A Buffalo starting his rehab assignment from his latest calf injury, a right calf strain. He went 1-for-3 with a single and played half a game at shortstop, his first action in nearly two months.

“He probably would have had the longest offseason ever if he didn’t get back playing,” manager John Schneider said. “He would have been going crazy. He wants to push the envelope a little bit and see how he can finish up.”

Bichette’s season has been a disappointment on every front. He has suffered multiple right calf injuries, and in between them, he has put up a .595 OPS with just four home runs in 80 games. With the Blue Jays expecting star production from Bichette -- and him expecting something even more than that -- it has been one of the biggest stories of the season. As Schneider has said dozens of times over the years, no one is harder on Bichette than himself.

That’s why Bichette’s return is so important, even if the stakes are so low. He’ll play a “handful” of games in Triple-A, so you can use the three-game series in Texas starting next Tuesday as a rough landing spot for his MLB return. That leaves 12 games left in the season, so let’s call it 10 starts for Bichette.

“It means a lot, just in talking to him,” Schneider said. “I love the fact that he’s getting back to it with the number of games we have left. For him, he wants to get back here and use however many games he has to feel like himself. He wanted to do that in the second half, then he got hurt. We wanted that, obviously, for our team. This will be big for him going into the offseason, knowing he finished healthy and hopefully finished well.”

Baseball moves quickly. It’s easy to forget who Bichette was -- and surely still is -- after one bad season. A year ago, Bichette felt like a safer long-term bet than Vladimir Guerrero Jr., or at least a steadier, more predictable player. As quickly as Bichette has fallen, Guerrero has skyrocketed back to the top of the league, dazzling baseball with the same talent he showed as a prospect and in 2021. If Bichette bounces back, though, it’s “Vladdy and Bo” all over again. Nothing is more important to the Blue Jays’ chances in 2025 than how Bichette returns from this injury.

It’s beyond 2025 that gets even more interesting. Extension talk will dominate the next 12 months, particularly surrounding Guerrero. Vladdy has long been the more outspoken of the two on most topics, including his desire to stay in Toronto long term, but that has suddenly changed. Earlier this week, Bichette told Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi that his ultimate goal is “… to play with Vladdy forever, to win a championship with him and to do that with this organization.”

If there’s one thing to know about Bichette, it’s this: He speaks for a reason. There’s no empty fluff from Bichette. He picks his spots.

“I’ve had those conversations with Bo and Vlad over the course of the years,” said Schneider, who also managed Guerrero and Bichette in the Minors, “so it’s not really surprising. Talking to Bo when he got back, after being home for a while, his perspective is in a good place. Both of those guys, they understand it. They’ve played together their whole careers, and they understand how this business works, too. They’ve become really good friends. It’s not surprising what he said.”

If nothing else, the final two weeks of the season are Bichette’s opportunity to change the conversation.

A flash of the old Bichette, even the briefest glimpse, will give us every excuse to believe in him again. It will be so easy to remember the .300 hitter with some pop, some flair and some history with this organization.

The Blue Jays need to change, add and replace so many things this winter. They need hope more than anything else, and eventually, Bichette can represent that again.