Bo Bichette is having a down year for the Blue Jays. After an 0-for-3 night with a walk in a 3-1 loss to the Guardians, Bichette is now batting .237 this season with a .286 on-base percentage. Those kind of numbers alone might push the Dodgers to stay away at the July 30 trade deadline, but there are some signs of an ascension to the mean that should still make him a valuable trade target despite his struggles at the plate.
One of the notable things with Bichette's season is that he got out of the gates very slow. Through Toronto's first six games he had only one walk and three hits. Since then the numbers haven't been great, but they've improved. He's batting .250 in the 59 games since and his on-base percentage has hovered around .300. Still, that's well below his career marks of .299 and .340 entering this season.
Interestingly, Bichette's walk rate and strikeout rates are fairly normal. What's abnormal are his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and his barrel rate. Those two things might go hand-in-hand.
His BABIP, a stat used to try and quantify luck, is a career-low .275. There are a handful of reasons a BABIP might dip 45 points below his career average. One of them is that he's not hitting the ball hard enough to keep defenders from turning his balls in play into outs.
Bichette has simply not been hitting the ball particularly hard this season. According to Statcast he's barreling only 4.7 percent of the balls he hits. His previous career low was 8.2 percent in his rookie season. As a result his hard hit rate is down to a career-worst 31.3 percent, and his soft contact rate is a career-high 19.0 percent. Here's some even deeper analytics: when players don't hit the ball as hard they are easier to get out.
That appears to be what's happening with Bichette this season. All of his contact numbers are actually up and there's no discernible difference in how often he's swinging at pitches either in or out of the zone. He's just not getting the ball on the barrel and it's turning hits into outs. That's something that should eventually work itself out given Bichette's track record.
In his previous five seasons he led MLB in hits twice, earned two All-Star trips and finished top-16 in MVP voting thrice. This prolonged skid is a little worrisome on the surface, but given what he'd do for the Dodgers' lineup if and when he gets right, it's well worth seeing if he'll start finding barrels again in a Dodgers uniform.
