Bichette joins list of Blue Jays playoff heroes who didn't return the following year

The offseason has taken a dark turn. 2026 has not begun the way any fan of the Toronto Blue Jays had hoped it would. In less than 24 hours, the Blue Jays failed to sign the prospective number one player on the market in Kyle Tucker, and failed to resign their own superstar in Bo Bichette. Tucker opted for one of the richest contracts in baseball history that was thrown at him by the LA Dodgers. Bo went to the Big Apple on another deal that was way above what anyone expected him to get.

Bichette also becomes the third player in the Ross Atkins GM era to be considered a playoff hero for the Blue Jays and not return the following season. A trend that is purely coincidence, if not a little concerning.

Bichette joins list of Blue Jays playoff heroes who didn't return the following year

Atkins' first season as the GM of this franchise was 2016. The Blue Jays got to the postseason as a Wild Card team that year. In the one and done Wild Card playoff game format of the time, the Blue Jays played host to the Baltimore Orioles. In that game, long time Blue Jays' first baseman / DH Edwin Encarnacion sent the Blue Jays to the Division Series by hitting a walk-off three run home run in the bottom of the 11th inning.

Toronto's postseason would end in the following round, a five game series loss at the hands of the Cleveland Guardians. Encarnacion was a free agent after that postseason and by all indications he wanted to come back to the Blue Jays. But there was a ton of miscommunication between his agent and the Blue Jays front office at the time and Encarnacion would end up joining the Guardians and hit 70 home runs over the next two seasons while slashing .252/.358/.490 with an OPS of .848.

Following that 2016 run, the Blue Jays failed to reach the playoffs until the 2020 COVID shortened season that included an expanded playoff format. Two years later, they once again got to the playoffs as a Wild Card team, but this time they were the host team for a best two out of three game series against the Seattle Mariners. After losing the first game, outfielder Teoscar Hernandez put the team on his back and tried to carry them to a Game 2 victory.

He went 2-for-4 in the game with two home runs, three runs scored, four RBIs and a stolen base. It was one of the best playoff game performances of this new era of the Blue Jays. Unfortunately, the game ended with the Mariners staging one of the greatest postseason comebacks of all-time and managed to sweep the Blue Jays in two straight games. But Hernandez, who had become a fan favourite in Toronto, had seemingly solidified himself as a core piece with his postseason performance. That wasn't to be the case as Hernandez was traded in the offseason to the Mariners for reliever Erik Swanson.

That brings us to Bichette. Who didn't appear in the first two rounds of the Blue Jays playoff series' in 2025, but managed to make it back on to the field for the World Series against the Dodgers. Bichette had a tremendous series going 8-for23 with six RBIs a .923 OPS and one huge, Game 7 home run off that knocked Shohei Ohtani out of the game. Like Encarnacion and Hernandez before him, it just wasn't enough to bring home a championship to the Blue Jays.

And also just like his predecessors, that postseason moment will be the last thing Blue Jays fans will get to see of that player in that jersey.

It's going to sting for a while and even if the Blue Jays make another signing before Spring Training, nothing is going to prepare Blue Jays fans for the sight of seeing Bo in a Mets uniform in 2026. The only thing that matters now is winning games when they start counting and those games are coming up in just over two months time.