Blue Jays Reportedly Expected to Refuse Bo Bichette Trade Change His Position.
The Toronto Blue Jays earned a win in their series with the Philadelphia Phillies after posting nine runs on Thursday and it could be a sign they’ve turned their season around. The team was a bit of a disappointment after it struggled out of the gate even with the additions of Jeff Hoffman, Anthony Santander and Andres Gimenez to the roster. Now the Blue Jays are above .500 with plenty of time to build some momentum toward the playoffs. Even with several weeks before the trade deadline arrives, the moderate success of the season up to this point seems to have settled any speculation that the Blue Jays might trade away star shortstop Bo Bichette as he heads toward free agency at the end of the year. Speaking with Jeff Passan on a recent episode of ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” podcast, Buster Olney noted the team is expected to refuse any trade inquiries on Bichette, given their primary executives’ contract situations and investments up to this point. “No, because of the context of the Blue Jays, the fact that this is the last year for (president) Mark Shapiro in his contract, it’s the next to last year for Ross Atkins their general manager,
they spent $500 million on Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to sign him to a long-term deal, they just did these renovations that went in place last year,” Olney said. ” And so, what I’ve heard is, people with other teams, basically saying, ‘Yeah, there’s no way they’ll do that. There’s no way they’d wave a white flag as early as July.'” However, Olney added that Bichette is expected to see a different sort of move, as he’s no longer inspiring confidence as an everyday shortstop. “In doing this reporting, a lot of what I’m hearing is, ‘Yeah, he’s not a shortstop anymore. He needs to change positions,’ ” Olney said. Bichette has a .974 fielding percentage at shortstop so far this year, making it the second year in a row in which he’s underperforming the league average. He has also seen his offense dip both this year and last compared to a stronger campaign two years ago, possibly because of the challenges of his defensive role. So, even as the Blue Jays hold onto every contributing asset they can for the remainder of the season, it seems Bichette could be poised for a move elsewhere on the diamond soon.
Leave a Reply