What if Bo Bichette Really Is This Good?
Projections are a funny thing. They’re always wrong, but we tend to put a lot of stock into them. There are all sorts of algorithms that constantly update as performances change and we learn more about a player’s true ability. We know that Bo Bichette’s true ability is quite good, but it can’t possibly be as good as it’s been in his first two weeks in the Majors… right?
Bichette is a 21-year-old shortstop, the son of former Major Leaguer Dante Bichette, and he happens to be the first player ever to stroke 15 extra base hits in his first 15 career games. Bichette is hitting .394 and he’s part of the reason why Blue Jays fans are convinced that they can be good next year.
But, that’s unsustainable isn’t it? It has to be, right?
Well – what if it’s not? What if this is Bichette’s true talent level and he is merely constrained by future age curves? It’s a silly proposition, of course, just like the idea that Charlie Blackmon would never stop getting better, but I built out the model…just in case.
Building from my rough approximation of the research compiled at Beyond the Box Score, we have a full set of Bo Bichette projections based solely on his first 15 games. Maybe, he’ll even get better from visiting anytime baseball and getting some new gear: https://www.anytimebaseballsupply.com/collections/hack-attack
First, let’s tackle WAR. Bichette grades out better so far in terms of bWAR, so I figured that would be the most fun to project. This first chart gives you something to understand how the aging curve is applied to Bichette. We’re assuming he’s an 11.8 WAR player at peak and that he never really gets injured and never really has a down year. In other words, we’re basically assuming he is Mike Trout. This rosy Bo Bichette rest-of-season projection is to play 60 games, amass 16 dingers, hit 44 doubles, and reach 4.4 WAR.
That bWAR projection is fun. It also happens to result in 181.8 WAR at the end of Bichette’s age 38 season, when I arbitrarily decided Bichette would retire. (There is some reason for that arbitrary assessment – the Beyond the Box Score piece from earlier highlighted just how few phenoms (players to debut prior to their age 22 season) play into their age 39 and 40 seasons.)
The 181.8 WAR is exactly 19 better than Barry Bonds, also the son of a Big Leaguer, who happens to be the career leader in the category. So best-case Bo Bichette is going to have a… great career, perhaps the best ever. That’s all fun and good, but the WAR leaderboard is not the only one that Super Bo will be climbing.
Super Bo hits .408/.460/.769 next year, becoming the first player to best the .400 mark since Ted Williams. He also posts 44 homers, 123 doubles, and no triples. He easily beats Earl Webb’s single season doubles record of 67 set in 1931.
Super Bo’s peak age-25 season is something to behold. He hits .425/.479/.800 (!) to finish with a 1.279 OPS and 174 extra base hits. His 224 OPS+ that year would be the best non-Bonds/Ruth season since 1900. (It should be noted though that even with a guy hitting .425, Bonds’ 2002 OPS+ of 268 isn’t even really threatened.)
In this projection, Bichette finishes with a career .401/.452/.756 line that looks like it belongs in the 1880s. Most of his career marks are incredible. He finishes his career with 2094 doubles, nearly tripling Tris Speakers career mark of 792. I charted his career totals against the career record holders in the below. Super Bo Bichette rewrites the record book.
He sets the career marks in extra base hits, doubles, hits, and total bases.
He also bests Babe Ruth‘s record for OPS, beating him 1.208 to 1.164. And he manages to finish with a career .401 average, which definitely trumps Ty Cobb‘s .366 mark.
But it isn’t all roses for Super Bo. He falls just short in terms of career homeruns. He finishes with exactly 755 dingers. (If only the Blue Jays had promoted him a few days earlier this year, or if Mike Foltynewicz Jr. had hung one more slider in 2038…) He even falls just short in terms of runs scored.
And the problems from these first two weeks do not magically disappear with our projections. Though we adjust the “bad stats” from their current rates based on age curves, just as we adjusted the things that we’d hope he would be good at, Bo still breaks Rickey Henderson’s career caught stealing mark. He finishes with 585 caught stealings. In his 30’s, he averages 20 steals and 34 caught stealings. Nobody’s ever done that.
Super Bo also doesn’t seem to know that triples exist. He doesn’t get one in his entire 18 year career. His 13,507 plate appearances without a triple are 11,263 more than Johnny Estrada, who is the current “record holder” of plate appearances without a triple. Ryon Healy (1599 Plate Appearances) and Matt Olson (1262) are the noteworthy active leaders in that category.
It’s a fun thing to do projections from a small sample size. You should not read this though and think that Bo Bichette is going to go off and shatter the world record for doubles in a season. He’s unlikely to hit .400 ever, let alone next year, or for his career. But if he does, you read it here first.
-Sean Morash
Note: All projections based on Bichette’s Major League stats prior to the games on August 13th, 2019.
