Bo Bichette prepared to make big lineup adjustment for Blue Jays in 2025

While Opening Day is less than three weeks away, the Blue Jays are still working through some questions with their lineup, with the biggest question being a simple one: Who's going to bat leadoff?

George Springer, who's been the team's primary leadoff hitter over the last four season, appears to have lost the role after struggling over the past couple days.

One obvious candidate to fill the void would be Bo Bichette, and it seems like it's a role he's ready to embrace.

“Yeah, it does excite me,” Bichette said when asked about leading off, per Sportsnets' Ben Nicholson-Smith. “I’ve spent some time there and always enjoyed my time there. I take it as a challenge to kind of set the tone for the team, and I like challenges, so hopefully, I get that opportunity.”

Since Springer has hit leadoff for the majority of Bichette's career, the Blue Jays shortstop has hit leadoff just 80 times in his 609 career MLB games. Despite this relative lack of experience in the role, Bichette in many ways seems like a prototypical leadoff hitter.

He led the American League in hits in both 2021 and 2022, and was on pace to do so again in 2023, before he missed 30 games due to injury, so it's clear that he would be a good table-setter.

Bichette is also one of MLB's freest swingers, routinely sitting in the upper part of the league in chase rate, and towards the bottom for whiff rate, but his contact skills are good enough that he can get away with it. When hitting in the two or three-hole, this can cause problems, since his willingness to offer at whatever he's given can lead to lots of weak contact and in turn, lots of double plays.

Bichette has grounded into the eighth most double plays in the American League ins 2021, but hitting in the leadoff spot would allow him to swing freely without as much of a risk of creating an extra out.

The only area of his game that isn't ideal for a leadoff hitter is his speed, which is right around league average, despite being a real strength of his game early in his career. However, this is a relatively small nitpick, and he's by no means too slow to be effective on the base paths.

Bichette has, throughout his career, profiled very well as a leadoff hitter, but it is important to remember that he struggled heavily in 2024.

He he just .225 with a 71 OPS+ while missing half of the season due to injury last year. He posted career-low numbers in just about every offensive metric. That being said, it was clear he was far from 100 percent, and seems to be back in shape this spring after having an entire offseason to relax.

Bichette entered Friday slashing .364/.391/.591 across 22 spring training at-bats. While it's worth remembering that's an extremely small sample size, he's looked much more like the Bo Bichette that Jays fans remeber from years prior.

He's consistently made strong contact, highlighted by his 419-foot home run against the Phillies last weekend.

Bichette's entering a contract year, so we have every reason to believe he'll perform better than he did in 2024. If he can return to form, he seems like the perfect candidate to become Toronto's new leadoff hitter.