When dealing with players at the stage Bichette’s at right now, baseball’s traditional persuasion is to quiet their swings as much as possible, eliminating any unnecessary movements so the athlete can quickly and efficiently put the bat to the ball. But Bichette’s swing is the anti-quiet. He’s never still in the batter’s box; he’s layered mechanisms on mechanisms. That’s why, in the lead up to the draft, Bichette says one team told him they thought he was the best hitter in the country but, simultaneously and somewhat confusingly, they hated his swing and couldn’t work with it. “Teams would say things like that, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me,” he says. “If I’m the best hitter in the country, I must be doing something right.”

Bichette’s believers say that every quirk in his swing is necessary to stay on-plane with the ball and generate the prodigious power he produces. From his wide stance, to the subtle waggle forwards and back, to the hitch in his hands, to the huge leg kick, to the spine-torqueing turn and finish — everything plays its part. Bichette will never be the biggest player on the field, but he hits pitches harder and farther than his peers built like tight ends. “It’s not bad to have movement that creates power and timing,” says Goodwin, who helped foster the swing when Bichette played for him. “This isn’t something he’s been doing for a year. This is something he’s been working on and perfecting since he grabbed a bat.”

And it comes naturally. Bichette says his father never changed a single element of his swing when he was growing up, merely telling him to do what felt comfortable and hit the ball as far as he could. When Bichette met with private hitting coach Bobby Tewksbary — who has worked closely with Donaldson — during his senior year of high school, the swing guru told him he was already doing everything he would’ve taught him. Goodwin — who’s coached 28 players who have gone on to play in the majors — says Bichette has the best hand-eye coordination and natural bat speed of anyone he’s ever instructed, and an uncommon understanding of how to get the most out of his body.

And then there’s his two-strike approach. Bichette cuts down his swing considerably with two strikes, eliminating his leg kick and adopting a low, wide stance that lets him defend against tough pitches and muscle good ones to all fields. “He’s probably one of the best two-strike hitters I’ve seen at any level. Honestly, he’s that good,” Murphy says. “He trusts it. He just lets the pitch get as deep as possible and tries to drive the ball the other way.”

Bichette works on that two-strike approach every day and is so confident in his swing he’ll let a two-strike pitch get as close as possible to the plate before he offers at it, trusting that if it’s a fastball on the plate he can shoot it the other way and if it’s a tough off-speed pitch he can foul it off. He’s already hit a number of home runs this season in two-strike counts, and through late June he was batting .346 when he put a ball in play while behind in the count. “I think it’s one of the most unique things about Bo — he has such a good understanding of his body and his swing and how to adjust it against different pitchers or in different situations to get results. I’ve never had a player at his age who’s that aware of his body,” Goodwin says. “Some of my guys who went to the big leagues, 24, 25-year-olds, are starting to understand that stuff just now. But at 18, 19 years old like Bo? No way. Not a chance.”