SportsCage MLB analyst Arash Madani wasn’t surprised when Bo Bichette left the Toronto Blue Jays in free agency.
“I think it was inevitable,” Madani said on The SportsCage. “Everybody said all the right things, even though nobody meant it, from the end of the season through the off-season. Bo didn’t want to come back; the team didn’t want to have him back. It was like that awkward moment at the dance where everyone’s looking around waiting for something.”
The Blue Jays selected Bichette in the second round, 66th overall during the 2016 MLB Draft. He made his debut with the team in 2019. The 27-year-old stayed with the club through the 2025 season and left in free agency to sign with the New York Mets, it’s a three-year contract totalling $126 million.
Toronto finished the 2025 season first in the American League with a 94-68 record, winning the AL East Division title and the AL pennant. The Jays faced the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series but lost in seven games. Last year with the Blue Jays, Bichette played 139 regular season games, hit 18 home runs, totalled 94 RBI, and produced a .311 batting average in 582 at-bats.
“He’d been around the organization for 10 years. I was around Bichette in 2019, 2021, 2022. Bo is a hard personality, Bo has high expectations of the people around him. I don’t think he was ever aligned with the front office; the front office was never really aligned with him,” Madani explained.
“It never felt like a fit. There was an element of him being sour at times. There was an element of the front office questioning things with him at times. There was always a disconnect there, that’s what I mean. No time did I think that Bichette was returning because I don’t think he wanted to come back and I don’t think the team wanted him back.”
MLB spring training started on Friday, February 20 and Madani knows the long grind when it comes to baseball.
“The amazing part is it’s seven weeks of spring training, then 162 games and a month of the postseason,” Madani said. “Every single day to get to game seven and now you start all over again. You don’t pick up where you left off, everybody starts at zero.”
During MLB free agency, the Blue Jays added depth to their pitching staff by signing Dylan Cease, Cody Ponce, and Tyler Rogers. Meanwhile, the team re-signed Max Scherzer and Shane Bieber opted back in.
“The Blue Jays went out and spent money on starting pitching, which everybody’s happy with because of the emergence of some of those kids, I don’t know if it’s sustainable,” Madani said.
“I’ll be honest with you, [Ernie] Clement and [Addison] Barger and [Nathan] Lukes, they’re going to give them a run. They’re going to see what they have there and then take stock of whether or not that’s sustainable. The Blue Jays believe it is. We shall see.”