Blue Jays get good update on re-signing Bo Bichette in free agency originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Toronto Blue Jays have already made a free agency splash. By signing pitcher Dylan Cease to a seven-year, $210 million contract, they’ve shown they aren’t messing around this offseason.
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Their fanbase will now wait and see whether that applies to middle infielder Bo Bichette, too. Bichette is a free agent after heroic hitting during the World Series.
There are certainly other teams interested.
But in new analysis from Keegan Matheson at MLB.com, the case is made it pretty convincingly as to why Bichette seems likely to stay in Canada.
Here’s what Matheson wrote:
“Bichette has said all along that he wants to stay in Toronto. He wants to remain with the organization that drafted him in 2016 and developed him into an All-Star. He wants to play alongside Vladimir Guerrero Jr., his longtime friend and co-star. Sentimentality only gets you so far, but the Blue Jays clearly hold some level of a “tiebreaker” here with Bichette if everything else is even. This organization needs another big bat in the middle of the lineup, too, and who better than Bichette, whose three-run home run off Shohei Ohtani in Game 7 of the World Series was nearly an era-defining moment? The interest here is mutual and the player fits a clear need, making this a sensible reunion on all fronts, even when you put emotion to the side.”
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That idea of interest being “mutual,” which Matheson explains, is probably the key.
Usually when a player and team want to get back together, they do.
Bichette may not be a long-term shortstop, but he can still be a long-term Blue Jay if Toronto plays its cards right through this free agency process.
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