TORONTO -- Every inning of Bo Bichette’s big league life had come at shortstop. Then, when Game 1 of the 2025 World Series began, he ran out to second base.
Back from a left knee sprain that cost him seven weeks, Bichette played second base for the first time since 2019 in the Minor Leagues. It’s clear the star shortstop isn’t at 100 percent, which is why he was shuffled to the other side of the bag, but the Blue Jays’ 11-4 win in Game 1 was a glimpse of what this could look like.
Bichette singled through the right side in his first at-bat and later walked to open the sixth inning, which grew into a nine-run eruption for the Blue Jays. This was never going to be a perfect re-entry for Bichette after so much time out of game action, but the organization has to be thrilled with what it just saw.
“I thought Bo, offensively, looked like him,” manager John Schneider said. “He gets a knock on a 3-0 changeup and then working the walk, man, was really impressive. Bo's a tough guy to walk. He's up there ready to hit. So I thought he handled himself really well. His at-bats looked like him. The play up the middle was kind of the thing we were looking for, and he handled it, made a good throw.”
The play Schneider mentions captured why Bichette is at second, too, instead of short. His range is limited as he still deals with this knee injury, but the throws from second are shorter. He was still able to get to a ground ball up the middle and throw back across his body in time. It doesn’t need to look beautiful, it just needs to work.
With that done and Bichette facing lefty Blake Snell for a third time in the sixth, Schneider felt that was the perfect time to pull the parachute.
Bichette’s leadoff walk that inning came when the score was still 2-2, so the Blue Jays needed Isiah Kiner-Falefa in there as a pinch-runner just in case a ball was hit into the gap. No one knew a nine-run inning was coming, so this was the plan.
“That was kind of the plan going in, was to see if we can get him three at-bats against a starter, see how he's feeling, and probably play it a little bit cautiously from there,” Schneider said. “So I loved the fact that he was the guy that kind of started that sixth inning.”
The move to start Bichette at second also allowed Andrés Giménez to stay at shortstop and George Springer to stay in the DH spot, where they’ve both grown very comfortable. Bichette has understood his own limitations coming back, so he was part of this conversation all along.
"To be honest, I brought it up," Bichette said on Friday. "It was something that I felt like I could get ready for quicker than another position. I just want to be ready to help the team in any way that is afforded to me, so that felt like an opportunity for me, and obviously they were on board with it."
Bichette became just the fourth player to make his first career start at a fielding position -- excluding pitcher and DH, minimum of 300 career regular-season games -- in the postseason, joining Jon Berti (2024 ALDS Game 2, first base for Yankees), Carlos Santana (2016 World Series Game 3, left field for Cleveland) and Jake Flowers (1931 World Series Game 2, third base for Cardinals).
Bichette would have every reason to be stubborn about this. Shortstop is his position and he’s about to enter free agency, where he’ll need to convince teams that he can play shortstop long-term and be paid like one. That’s not how the 2025 Blue Jays have worked, though. Like Bichette says, this is a clubhouse full of players with plenty of reasons to have an ego, from World Series rings to All-Star appearances and big contracts. No one has gone that route, though.
Eric Lauer, Chris Bassitt and José Berríos all accepted moves to the bullpen professionally. Toronto’s role players, of which there are many, have smiled and nodded every time they’re yanked out of the lineup and thrust back into it. Bichette feels this is “a team in every sense of the word.” They don’t have the star power of the Dodgers, so they need to win as a team and Bichette just wants to be part of that.
Bichette’s best position is being in the lineup. He just showed why, and regardless of what the Game 2 lineup and defense look like, the Blue Jays need Bichette making that slow walk to the plate again.