‘I’m not like Donaldson’: The all-feel swing mechanics of Bo Bichette

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Bo Bichette is all natural.

The Blue Jays number two prospect — and a top offensive prospect in all of baseball — has one of the most unique swings in the organization. Straying from the norm often involves some careful planning, but in an era obsessed with slow-mo swing analysis and viral hitting tips, Bichette is doing his own thing.

“I’m not huge into mechanics,” Bichette said. “I’m not like Donaldson. I’m not huge into that stuff. I’m more natural, I go off of feel.”

Bichette’s swing has two-dozen moving parts, which scared off some scouts ahead of the 2016 MLB Draft. The exaggerated leg kick and max-effort rips were a blueprint for a swing that a pitcher could find a hole in.

But they haven’t. As it turns out, those two-dozen moving parts are all moving in the same direction.

This swing goes all the way back for Bichette. His father Dante Bichette, a 14-year MLB veteran and four-time all star, encouraged Bo to follow the natural movements of his own body and form his own swing. Bo didn’t have many coaches bold enough to tinker with Dante’s hitting advice, either.

“When I was little with my dad, the base of the advice he gave me was to try to hit the ball as far as you can and to just figure out how to be consistent doing that,” Bichette said. “What that did was let me be natural, do what I want, and learn how to be consistent being natural.”

Leg kicks are commonplace in Major League Baseball, but Bichette’s swing sets itself apart with a heavy rock back towards the catcher and a powerful explosion through the hips. When Bichette maxes out his swing, his left knee (from his front leg) ends up closer to the catcher than any part of his body.

“Just picking up your leg doesn’t create any power,” Bichette said. “You create power from torque and weight transfer.”

That weight transfer has allowed a six-foot, 200-pound shortstop to post a 1.018 OPS over the first two years of his career and earned Bichette the minor-league batting title in 2017. He was the first teenager to accomplish the feat in 54 years.

Bichette’s swing also goes against the grain when it comes to the type of contact he produces.

A leg kick often leads to a pull-heavy approach. Blue Jays fans know this well from the days of Jose Bautista. Of Bautista’s 85 home runs over his last three seasons in Toronto, only three went to the opposite field. Bichette, on the other hand, hit eight home runs to the pull side in 2017 with six to the opposite field. He also scattered line drives from foul line to foul line, something he’s able to do because of tremendous balance and body control through his swing.

In fact, Bichette only recalls being shifted once in 2017. In a two-strike count, Bichette remembers an opponent moving their shortstop to the other side of second base to protect against him going the opposite way.

Bichette’s two-strike adjustment also rounds out his offensive game. Simply put, he becomes less greedy.

The leg kick typically disappears in a two-strike count and is replaced with a “knee tuck”, a motion that’s sometimes called a “toe tap” or “toe turn.” Instead of lifting his front leg and launching into a full swing, Bichette keeps his front toe on the ground and shifts his focus to making some sort of hard contact.

“I do the knee tuck 98 per cent of the time with two strikes,” Bichette said. “When I don’t do it with two strikes, I’m pretty confident in myself against that pitcher. Maybe I know what pitch I’m going to get or I’m just feeling good and I know he doesn’t have something to strike me out with. Ten per cent of the time I’ll go no leg kick with no strikes. Bad lights, bad stadium, for some reason I don’t see the ball out of the pitcher’s hand, just trying to give myself more time to make hard contact if I’m not feeling well.”

That’s been a fairly recent progression for Bichette, too.

“In high school I used to toe tap more,” Bichette said. “I didn’t leg kick until my senior year. It allowed me to be a little more loose because sometimes I would hold my tap too long.”

Bichette’s lower half gets all the attention, but the adjustments to his upper half are just as responsible for his success.

“I used to hold my hands up over my head,” Bichette said. “Now, it’s more near my shoulder.”

By leaning on natural movements, Bichette feels that he is better able to adjust on the fly. There is no point in Bichette’s swing where he wants to have his hands in X position when his knee is at X height, so he feels that his in-swing adjustments can be more natural.

Sometimes this comes in the form of a hesitation at the top of his leg kick, pausing for a split-second to allow a breaking pitch to reach him. Other times it will come from his hands and arms as his body quickly uncoils.

Given the nature of Bichette’s swing, it is easier for him to make these adjustments when he stays within himself. He felt that he was too “back-side heavy” earlier in his career, meaning that his weight shift was pushing him too far back on his right foot and making him unbalanced.

Bichette continues to tinker, whether it be on purpose or subconsciously, and the Blue Jays haven’t tried to change a thing.

“That’s something I did,” Bichette said. “Most of my adjustments are made on my own.”