How a pinch hit at bat turned Bo Bichette's season around

Entering May 28th, the Toronto Blue Jays were sitting two games below .500 at 26-28, and had lost 20 of their last 34. Bo Bichette, in particular, had been having a rough season, entering the day with a .710 OPS and just four homers across 54 games. For the first time in 2025, Bichette wasn't in the starting lineup due to some lower back tightness, as the Jays faced the Rangers in the rubber match of their three-game series.

The Toronto offence had managed just four runs across their previous five games, and things weren't going much better that night in Texas. Both teams were scoreless through eight innings, but with a runner on second and two outs in the top of the ninth, Bichette came in to pinch hit for Michael Stefanic and launched a ball to deep left field to drive in the only two runs of the game, giving the Blue Jays the win.

How a pinch hit at bat turned Bo Bichette's season around

Before that home run, it looked like his struggles from 2024 may have carried into 2025, but ever since, he's been a completely different player.

Since May 28th, Bo Bichette is slashing .316/.351/.521 with an .872 OPS and 12 homers across 299 plate appearances. His 89 hits over this stretch are tied for the most in MLB, and his 56 RBIs rank sixth.

The difference between Bichette before and after that home run is night and day, and whether his resurgence is a direct result of that moment or not, it obviously sparked something that has completely changed his season. Since the start of July, he's been unreal, batting .346 with a .938 OPS.

These numbers are what Blue Jays fans had come to expect from the shortstop, who received MVP votes in 2021, 2022, and 2023, before a disastrous 2024 that saw him post an OPS below .600 in 81 games.

Thanks to this stretch, Bichette now leads MLB with 151 hits, and has 13 more than anyone else in the American League. If that holds, it will be the third time in his career that he's led the AL in hits, having done so in 2021 and 2022.

His peripherals are also back where they used to be, with his expected batting average of .306 ranking second in MLB, behind only Vladimir Guerrero Jr. This turnaround is especially important considering that it’s a contract year for Bichette. After a career-worst 2024, a bad 2025 could have cost him millions of dollars on the open market. Whether it's in Toronto or elsewhere, he's put himself in a position to get paid this offseason.

May 28th wasn't just a turning point for Bichette; it was a turning point for the Blue Jays as a whole. Since that date, they've gone an AL-best 47-23, coming from eight games back of first place to lead the AL East by five games (through Sunday, Aug. 17).

With one swing of the bat in front of 20,000 people on a Wednesday night in Texas, Bichette not only turned his season around, but lit a fire under the Jays that's been burning ever since. Maybe it's a coincidence, and he was bound to get hot eventually, but it's hard not to see that homer as the moment both he and the Blue Jays finally turned things around.