TORONTO — Bo Bichette didn’t pay much attention to his home run drought at the beginning of the season. Hitting is a process, he was getting his knocks out of the gate, there was some sample-size randomness at play and he trusted that it would come. 

Still, once sports channel tickers started pointing out that he hadn’t gone deep since May 27, 2024, it suddenly became harder to ignore.

“I was like, oh, dang, it’s been a long time, because people were tying in last year with it, even though I felt it was just that 32 games or whatever,” recalled the Toronto Blue Jays shortstop. “I would say probably like three games before I ended up hitting the homer (May 3) is when I started really thinking about it.”

The home runs have flowed ever since, with his leadoff drive in Saturday’s 7-1 thumping of the Chicago White Sox giving him sole possession of the team lead at 11. He’s also tops the club in RBIs at 46, underlining how dynamic a force he is atop the Blue Jays lineup.

More importantly, as June’s evaluative stretch ebbs and July’s action period looms, Bichette also seems to be locking in all the various elements of his game. Saturday’s homer was his third of the current homestand, during which he’s 9-for-22 with five RBIs and five runs scored, looking exactly like the type of carrying player he’s capable of being.

“This season’s kind of been like a couple different stories for me,” he said in an interview before the game. “The first month, I was very competitive, got a lot of two-strike hits, average was high, but there wasn’t a whole lot of power. The next month, it all kind of flipped and went the other way, average wasn’t as high as I’m used to, but the power was there. And lately, well, I’m trying to put them together. I’ve had my moments and I’ve not had my moments. But I feel like I’m getting closer to just putting it all together.”

That’s a tantalizing thought for the Blue Jays, who also got a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. solo shot in the seventh inning, No. 10 for the four-time all-star first baseman who also seems to be on the verge of one of his heaters. 

The two homers were sandwiched around a three-run second in which George Springer scored after going first to third on an Ernie Clement single, forcing right-fielder Austin Slater’s throwing error, and Davis Schneider and Nathan Lukes added RBI singles. Schneider added a two-run double in the eighth that pushed the game further out of reach.

Staked to an early lead, José Berríos delivered the long outing the Blue Jays desperately needed after burning through seven pitchers when Friday’s 7-1 bullpen day blew up. He allowed only an unearned run in the sixth while logging 7.2 frames, striking out five in an outing that helped reset the relief crew.

With Chris Bassitt set to start Sunday’s series finale, the Blue Jays are in position to both close out a winning homestand and reset their pitching staff with an off-day Monday ahead of a road trip to Cleveland and Boston.

Bichette’s recent surge is less the byproduct of some recent changes and results beginning to more closely align with good process, as his underlying numbers have been strong all season. 

He entered Saturday’s play with an expected batting average of .313, a 98th-percentile mark which is the highest of his career. His expected slug of .513 is second only to the .532 he posted during the pandemic summer of 2020, his hard-hit percentage of 49.6 is just off his personal best of 50.3 in 2022, while his strikeout percentage of 15.9 is also a personal best, well ahead of last year’s 19.

Yet in 30 games during March/April, he hit .295 but slugged only .364, before in May, batting .261 while slugging .513 with seven homers. 

That wasn’t totally by design — “I didn’t go into the month saying I want homers,” he said — but “once I started hitting a couple, I probably fell in love with that a little bit more than grinding out hits. Now that I have some homers on the board, I’m trying to put it all together because I want to be a complete hitter, not one or the other.”

Manager John Schneider, who has consistently pointed out the quality of Bichette’s contact all season, believes the Blue Jays are getting “the normal version of Bo right now,” one on track to do the type of damage he’s accustomed to.

“It starts with him,” said Schneider. “When he’s on the attack, he’s at his best and he’s able to react in real time, so it goes hand in hand with having a specific approach, am I going to hunt a fastball early, am I going to sit on something. But as long as he’s swinging the way he is, he can do what he’s doing right now.”