Bo Bichette is progressing as he recovers from injury. The Toronto Blue Jays shortstop has been on the Injured List since July 19 with a calf strain after enduring the worst season of his career to date.
Bichette has taken a key step closer to a return to the lineup, however, according to Kaitlyn McGrath of The Athletic. She outlined Bichette’s week of rehab, which began with him running the bases on Monday. On Tuesday, he will participate in “baseball activities on the field” before running the bases again Wednesday. Actual rehab games could follow after that.
Blue Jays manager John Schneider elaborated in an appearance on the Blair and Barker podcast on Saturday.
“Bo [is] continuing to progress well, he’s going to have a little bit of a lighter day from a running standpoint today,” he said at the time. “But, he’s going to be hitting, taking ground balls and doing everything else baseball wise. He’s making progress for sure.”
McGrath added Tuesday that Bichette will stay with the Blue Jays through their upcoming series in Atlanta. If he goes on a rehab assignment after that, it would put him on track to return with a little more than two weeks left in the season. The Blue Jays are well out of playoff contention, so if Bichette does return, it will simply be to try and build some momentum for next year and eliminate the sour taste the season has left in his mouth.
Bo Bichette and the Blue Jays have both had rough seasons
Much like his team, Bichette has not had the season he envisioned. He came into 2024 off an All-Star age 25 season in which he hit .306 with 20 home runs and an .814 OPS. Similarly, the Blue Jays won 89 games last year, reaching the postseason as a Wild Card team.
Both player and team had every reason to expect even better in 2024.
Instead, the Blue Jays never found their footing as Bichette and teammate George Springer both had their worst offensive seasons. For Bichette, that has meant a .222 average with only four home runs in 80 games. He currently has a negative bWAR (-0.4) and a well-below-average OPS+ (69).
Bichette spoke with reporters last week when he rejoined the team to continue his recovery. He shared how difficult the injury has been on him.
“You’re always going to look yourself in the mirror so you can do better,” Bichette told SportsNet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith. “And there’s definitely things I could have done better. I mean, obviously, the performance shows that. But yeah, the toughest thing for me really was the last injury.”
The injury came at the worst possible time for him — that calf had acted up before, but by mid-July, he felt like he was finally starting to turn his season around.
“I felt confident about it and, really, there was never any doubts from me that I was going to figure it out and have the season that everybody expects me to have,” he continued. “And so when that was taken away from me, that was a bit difficult at first, but I moved on pretty quick.”
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