TORONTO — Watching from the sidelines as his Toronto Blue Jays first won the American League East, then beat the New York Yankees in the division series and then rallied past the Seattle Mariners in the league championship, Bo Bichette pushed and pushed and pushed as far as the sprained PCL in his left knee allowed, hoping to play in the World Series.
“All I’ve been thinking about is this moment,” the star shortstop said Thursday afternoon ahead of one last workout to help rubber-stamp his status for the Fall Classic, which opens Friday night at Rogers Centre. “I’ll be ready for whatever opportunity comes my way.”
Manager John Schneider was understandably coy — Bichette could return at short, second or as the DH, he said — but what’s telling is that he was on the right side of the infield, with Andres Gimenez to his left at shortstop, as the Blue Jays ran through their infield drills.
Gimenez’s defensive work up the middle has helped to backbone the club’s deepest post-season run since winning the second of back-to-back championships in 1993, and Bichette isn’t on the cusp of returning with demands. He’s taken in the past 6½ weeks with pride rather than envy as the Blue Jays kept winning, and now “feeling good enough” to be a part of things, he’s down for anything, befitting the team-first ethos that’s carried them here.
“This team, I think, made it pretty obvious they don’t need me to come here and be the hero,” said Bichette. “They need me to come in here and be a part of the team, do my job, whatever that’s asked of me, to the best of my ability. And that’s been what this team has been made of the whole season. So, I mean, really like, huge lessons for all of us to look around and see what a real team is.”
That real team faces its most formidable test yet against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, a dynamic and glitzy collection of some of the sport’s top talent led by Shohei Ohtani, the two-way superstar who broke the hearts of Blue Jays fans two winters ago when the club was a finalist vying for the then free-agent.
Asked to revisit that pursuit, Schneider quipped that he hopes Ohtani “brought the Blue Jays hat that he took from us in our meeting, I hope he brought it back, finally, and the jacket for Decoy (Ohtani’s famous dog) – it’s like, give us our stuff back already.”
“But he’s a great player,” Schneider continued. “That aside, I think that we have a great team and just an unbelievable cast of characters and players. I think things worked out the way they’re meant to work out.”
The same applies with Roki Sasaki, the international free agent righty who visited Toronto before opting, as expected, for the Dodgers last winter, and now both players get a sliding-doors look at what their World Series experience might have been like.
They arrived to a city still buzzing about George Springer’s seventh-inning, Game 7 homer in a 4-3 victory over the Mariners that made fans do everything from scream to weep tears of joy. The 2025 World Series logo was emblazoned on the field and on every videoboard at the dome, while the finishing touches were put on the stadium ahead of the first Fall Classic game here since Joe Carter’s walk-off Game 6 homer won the 1993 title, which would make him a fitting pick for ceremonial first pitch to open the 2025 edition.
While Bichette – who also took several live at-bats, crushing a Bowden Francis pitch off the centre-field wall, before patrolling second base – was the primary decision facing the Blue Jays before rosters are due at 10 a.m. Friday, he wasn’t the only one.
Rookie sensation Trey Yesavage was named Game 1 starter with Kevin Gausman needing an extra day to recover after throwing an inning out of the bullpen Monday, and the club was still finalizing how the rest of the rotation would roll out. The assignment is the latest step in the 22-year-old’s remarkable climb from low-A to the World Series, with Friday set to be his fourth-start of the post-season, one more than he made in the majors during the regular season.
“With this being my rookie season and having these high-pressure games,” he said of his approach, “I try to treat it as if it’s not as high-pressure as it is mentally, but I know it’s there.”
Gausman, meanwhile, threw a side during the workout, an indicator that he’ll start Saturday’s Game 2, which would line up Shane Bieber and Max Scherzer for Games 3 and 4, unless they decide to get creative in some form.
Gausman said he knew that it he pitched Monday “that maybe Game 1 would kind of be a stretch and man, that was hard for me to swallow, to be honest. As a competitor, as a pitcher, even just as a baseball fan, that’s all we ever want. But I also know I’m trying to be the best that I can for every game that I pitch. I would hate to go out there not knowing exactly what I’m going to get out of myself. That played a big part in the last couple days. But physically, I’m ready to go in whatever game that is. I’m just fired up to be in this spot, pitching against the best in the world on the biggest stage.”
How the Blue Jays decide to use Bichette and lineup the rotation will help decide whether they carry 14 position players and 12 pitchers or opt for an even 13/13 split the way they did in the previous two rounds.
Bichette ran the bases again and looked guarded while doing so, but said earlier in the day that he “feels good enough” running and added that, “I feel like I would be able to run the bases fine.”
As such, all their final calls tie into one another, although Bichette’s looming return was creating excitement for his teammates, as was his willingness to do whatever the club asked of him.
“That’s who we are. It’s how we play. It’s a mentality that he’s helped instill and he’s still doing it,” said Springer, who added that “if not for Bo Bichette, we might not even be here. He means the world to us as a team, a locker-room. To hopefully have him back and playing is a huge boost for us.”
Gausman described Bichette’s flexibility as “awesome” because “he’s earned the right” to make demands as “one of the best hitters in baseball since he’s been to the big-leagues.”
“I’m super excited to see him out there,” Gausman added. “Once he got hurt I know a lot of guys, me included, went to him, and were like, we’re doing everything we can to see you play again this year. Now, we’re at that point. We’re just excited to see him go out and be a part of this, like he has been for so many years. If he wasn’t a part of it, I would be just heartbroken for him. He’s been such a big part of what we’ve done here.”
Added outfielder Myles Straw: “We’re super thrilled. Bo is a game-changer. Bo deserves to be here. He’s been here for six years and this moment is huge for him. He’s been talking about it to me all post-season about how just how crazy it is and how exciting it is here. He just wants to win and he wants to win for this country. So excited to see him in that good state of mind in trying to fight back to help us win the World Series.”
Bichette is intent on doing precisely that.
While the city around him celebrated Springer’s epic home run, “I started thinking about being ready for this – that’s all that’s been on my mind,” said Bichette, who acknowledged jumping back into action after an extended absence is “a challenge.”
“I also think that I would be feeling like I have a challenge in front of me, whether I’d been playing or not,” he continued. “I have a lifetime of work specifically for this moment that I can fall back on. There are possibilities where I do maybe things that I haven’t done but I trust in my ability to compete and have good at-bats and whatever role they use me in, I’ll be there.”
Barring a surprise, he will be, as he, his teammates and Blue Jays fans get the World Series they’ve long been waiting for.
